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:: Audio file ::

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Listen to Jean-Marc pronounce the French word "bécote" and read the quote:
Download becote.mp3. Download becote.wav

  Viens là que je te bécote!
  Come here so I can kiss you!

  –from Les Princes de Combrailles by Michel Geny-Gros
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Tucking in my son for the night, I hear:
"Mom, I am going to be thirteen next month. Can I have une boum?"*
"Of course," I answer. "Will there be girls at your birthday party?"
"Yes and there will be a couple."
"A couple?"
Max points to a girl’s name and a boy’s name on his birthday list.
"Ils sont ensemble." They’re together, he explains.
"Oh… and do YOU have a girlfriend?"
Max: (Silence and a growing grin…)
Me: (Silence and a growing chagrin…)

"Mom…. I’m in love!"
"You are in LOVE?"
Max: (grinning from ear to freckled ear)
"Love? as in ‘amour’?"
Max: (nodding enthusiastically)
"Love, like l-o-v-e?"
Max: (closing his eyes, shaking his head, non-stop grin across his freckled face)

"I am in love!" my 12-year-old declares to the universe, and to one disconcerted earthling sitting beside him.

"Max, just so you know: if you so much as KISS a girl you will grow great big warts all over your freckled face, beginning with one right there on the very tip of your freckled nose!"

"But, Mom…" Max says with a devilish grin. "I don’t have any warts."

                                        *    *     *
For kissing the girls, Max was tickled until the freckles fell off his face. Catching his breath, he addressed the tickler, in mock astonishment.

"Mom, he said, you have zits!* Right there – on the very tip of your nose!"

Never has a kissing convict been so quickly released from tickle jail, as the worried wardress ran from the room in search of a mirror of truth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~References~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

une boum (f) = (surprise) party; zit (pimple, spot) = un bouton
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