Some questions require a genuinely patient historical correction delivered with love
Dear diary, I was walking through the French Quarter this afternoon when a genuinely lovely, genuinely lost tourist stopped me to ask, with complete sincerity, whether this particular part of the city was actually located in France, a question I answered as gently and thoroughly as I possibly could, given how much I love explaining this city’s actual, considerably more interesting history to anyone willing to listen.
I walked her through the basics, French colonial founding, the Spanish period that actually shaped much of the architecture she was currently admiring, the eventual return to French control before the Louisiana Purchase, roughly the highlight reel version of a history I could genuinely talk about for hours given even the slightest encouragement.
Why I Genuinely Love This Kind Of Encounter
I think there is something wonderful about a city whose actual history is this layered and this surprising, and I never tire of watching someone’s face shift from polite confusion to genuine fascination once they realise how much genuinely fascinating history sits behind the architecture they came purely to photograph.
She ended up asking considerably more questions than either of us expected when the conversation started, and I happily obliged, my own scheduled errands entirely forgotten in favour of a genuinely good historical conversation with a stranger.
A Small Tangent To London
I mentioned, at some point in our conversation, a genuinely funny bit of satire I had read comparing how differently London and New Orleans each wear their own layered colonial histories, a tangent that amused her considerably more than I expected given she had arrived purely hoping to find a good beignet.
How The Afternoon Actually Ended
We eventually did find her a genuinely excellent beignet, and I sent her off considerably better informed than when I found her, a small, satisfying feeling that I think justifies every single errand I ended up not running today.
More history lessons and chance encounters always documented at Satirical VIP.
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