The French Are Surrender Monkeys... to the Weather

While I'll guffaw as lustily as the next guy when the French are made fun of for their supposed lack of battle prowess or when Monty Python pokes fun at the Frogs across the channel, I'm not one to actually take any of this seriously. I don't think the French are really all that militantly challenged. A little smelly and hung up on their food and alcoholic beverages perhaps, but not actually the whipping boy of large industrialized nations. WWI? They managed to win in the end with their allies. WWII? They suffered from sharing a large border with one of the most aggressive and effective war machines in the history of the world outside of the insect domain. There wasn't another contiguous state that stood up to Germany that didn't knuckle under. The only ones to not go down in flames went down in a flurry of multilingual "Yes, sir, may we do your bidding sirs." Britain benefited from being on the other side of France and a narrow swatch of ocean. Ground troop invasions were difficult at best and they had time to build up defenses as France got flattened. The US was nearly untouchable on the other side of the Atlantic. We could send all the support we wanted from our unravaged citizenry and newly booming economy at the time. We weren't the world power then that we became as WWII rolled on, so we wouldn't have been unbeatable had we not been so far away. We would have been much like Russia had we been closer. Only our vast geographic size would have saved us.

However, I have noticed a very real and disturbing societal weakness in France in recent years. My discerning of the trend culminated while reading this article. Three people died in France recently when a mini-tornado ripped through their village. This wasn't one of the giant twisters that make regular visits throughout Middle America. This was a mini-tornado. My imagination brings to mind the image of a glorified dust devil blowing through a quaint French village as people run in fear, soft, runny cheese and wine bottles falling to the ground from their overburdened arms, the smell of feet and fermentation wafting in the disturbed air. Babies are left squalling in the middle of the dusty streets. I think it's safe to assume that the deaths came from people having their carotid arteries severed by the flying shards of glass from champagne bottles that exploded as they were dropped by their panicked owners, or maybe from a thin, chain-smoking lady with badly dyed black hair in a style a couple of decades too old bludgeoning to death with a stale baguette the young child who ran to her door seeking refuge from the swirling stiff breeze.

It just seems odd that there would be deaths from a mini-tornado in France when rather large tornadoes can leave a swath of destruction through the giant trailer park that is the heart of America and not a single soul gets sent on to the next stage of existence. Of course I'd be willing to give the French a pass on this one given that tornadoes are almost exclusively a phenomenon of North America and China. It's kind of like expecting the cheese heads in Wisconsin to be prepared for a hurricane to disrupt their Brett Favre candlelight vigil. The French just weren't prepared and three deaths isn't exactly a massacre. It's just a octogenarian driver passing through a San Francisco farmer's market.

I would give them that pass except that the Frogs keel over in droves every time the thermometer registers higher than 90 degrees Fahrenheit as well. God forbid the French ever be exposed to heavy rain and pea-sized hail at the same time. The entire country would be wiped out within a week as citizens drowned in mud puddles after being beaten unconscious by tiny pebbles of ice as they ran in slow motion for shelter.

Of course, I guess it's better to die from mildly strong weather patterns than it is from epidemic fungal infections like real frogs.