C'est Original

I'll never forget one day when I was taking pictures near the Palais Royal in Paris. It was the fall of 1988*. Ken and I were there on vacation; our first trip back to Paris since we left in 1982.

I noticed that a pigeon had stepped through a puddle on the sidewalk and was leaving little footprints on the stone. I bent down to snap this:

This photo is scanned from a slide.
It's a bit blurry, but you get the idea.

There was a guy close by, watching. His clothes were old and kind of tattered. He was in dire need of a shave, and probably a bath.

After I took the picture our eyes met. He smiled and said, "C'est original..."

In this sense, original means strange, curious, or bizarre. Thanks to him, I've never forgotten how to use that word in French.

* Holy time warp, Batman, that's twenty years ago!