“Canadiens meet American Girls”

It was a hot summer day in July, and a perfect beach day. My friend Breck and I decided that we would go to Old Orchard Beach after our Summer hockey game. We packed a cooler filled with sandwiches, drinks and treats, beach chairs, towels, a football and it was our intent to go watch “the scenery”.
We started walking around downtown Old Orchard by the arcade, Bill’s Pizza, The Pier, and the Carnival. What you should know, is that Breck is the kind of kid who just makes you laugh almost every time he speaks. He mutters words out the corner of his mouth and it’s always sarcastic and funny. He isn’t a loud kid at all, but I have had more belly laughs with him more than anyone else. As we rounded downtown OOB, we saw these two girls while they were playing a game in the arcade, so we stopped and sat on the bench and watched them. The girls were wearing short jean shorts and lots of red white and blue, since it was around the 4th of July. We started interracting with them, and cheered them on as they played their game in the arcade saying “Lets go!” “Boooooo” “C’mon you’re better than that.” This perfectly describes Breck. He only trash talks or says something really funny. They seemed very friendly and started talking to us and they asked us where we were from.

For some reason, I felt like being silly and we said we were from Quebec and we were visiting with our Semi Pro hockey team. The girls were from a wealthy town in Massachusetts and their parents owned a house on the beach in OOB. They had hundreds of dollars with them and were buying so many items from the stores, including multiple hermit crabs.

The girls were laughing at us, they thought we were funny and laughed at the way we talked.
So, the girls were trying to get to know us, and we started speaking jibberish French, sprinkling in a few legit French terms here in there. Neither one of us can carry on a conversation in French, but we had a lot to say that day and ended up coming up with some doozies. The girls knew we understood English, but they thought it was very little. We were all having a good time, laughing and going along with the day. I had a hard time looking at Breck the entire time, because we would just bust out laughing and then the girls did the same.

Breck and I ended up spending about an hour and a half with the girls, walking around and exchanging laughter. Our French language isn’t strong, but we have the accent down quite strong. In the end, it was kind of immature but it still makes us laugh and we continue to speak jibberish french on the ice together.
To this day, we still call the girls on our bus rides home from games, and the girls still think we are from Canada. The importance of laughter is to draw others towards you, and create good relationships. I am thankful that the 4 of us can still get humor out of that day. Like I said Breck and I were not intending on hanging out with these girls but im glad we did because it was the most fun I had in a long time. It is always great to have some good laughs with your friends, especially teammates. After that day Breck and I have told so many of our friends about the interaction we had with the girls.

“beach” by barnyz is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.