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Week 2: Figure of Speech
Jul. 20th, 2025 09:34 amThis is my entry for LJ Idol: Wheel of Fate. This week's topic is "Figure of Speech."
My aching legs demanding a rest, I plopped down onto a low, smooth wall. My son and his cousins were about to ride the Zenith, a hubless Ferris wheel with a steampunk look inside the Mega Parc, an amusement park in the Galeries de la Capitale, a very large mall in Quebec City, Canada.
Just as my butt hit the seat, my sister exclaimed, "You're not supposed to sit there!"
"You're not?" I asked, with audible distress.
She pointed to a sticker affixed to the bench that said something in French and included a stick figure apparently falling off a bench, with a red line through it. My exhausted mind agreed with her that it was an odd way of telling people not to sit there. I don't know: maybe the surface was occasionally slippery, in colder times of year? Maybe if you sat there, you were in the drop zone of the Zenith and could get a face-full of whatever careened off the Ferris wheel?
Fig. 1: A stick figure sits on a badly-drawn rectangular bench, leaning to the right with a hand reaching down. A red circle with a slash through it overlays the awkward scene.
With a sigh, I heaved myself back into a roughly vertical position and followed her to the gate where our kids would exit once the ride ended, so that we could crane our necks and experience the ride vicariously.
At the close of the ride, we met up with my husband, The Gryphon, who was comfortably seated on one of the prohibited smooth ledges.
"You're not allowed to sit on those," I informed him.
"No," he said. "You are not allowed to stick your hand over the ledge when the Zamboni is in use."
I finally tried to grok the French in the sign and realized that he was probably right. It mentioned something about "mains" (hands) and "pieds" (feet), as well as "Zamboni." The enticing ledge, it turns out, was just above an oval ice-skating track, the Patinarium, that wound around the amusement park area.
As if to prove the point, the Zamboni, painted a dull copper and encrusted with decorative gears in keeping with the steampunk theme, slid by on the ice, the operator giving us a wry smile.
Throughout our experiences in Quebec City, deep in the French-speaking part of Canada, we found that most signs communicated messages in more than one way. Either they'd be in both French and English, or they'd be in French with a visual symbol. Some of those, however, were so unique they were hard for us Americans to parse.
This was only the third day of our family vacation in Quebec City, but the previous day had involved hours of walking as we visited the Lower Town (Basse-Ville) shops and then took the Funicular to take a near-vertical ride up to Upper Town (Haute-Ville) to view Le Chateau Frontenac, an historic hotel built in 1893 that looks like an old-world castle.
On our ride up, we noted a sign so important it used three ways of communicating: English ("No leaning"), French ("Pas de penchement") and an image of a stick figure seemingly being way too relaxed against a vertical surface, with a line through it. The sign was stuck on the front and back glass doors of the steel-and-glass box we were riding to the neighborhood on the Cap Diamant cliff above us.
Fig. 2: A stick figure leans against a vertical line representing a wall. The stick figure has one knee bent, one leg straight, and a bent elbow to look awfully relaxed, considering how deep the fall would be on the other side of the glass. There's a circle and red line through the image.
That one was easy. Also easy, the image of an enterprising stick figure, its chunky arms and legs askew on a railing, indicating someone (most likely a child) climbing. Of course, the requisite red circle and slash indicated this was an action not to emulate.
This particular sticker appeared on the top deck of the Quebec City-Levis Ferry, next to a similar barred railing. My sister pointed this one out to me as our families, along with our dad and our brother's daughter, sat on benches near the railing as we waited for the ferry to take off. We agreed it's probably an ongoing problem there, as children are basically monkeys.
Fig. 3: A stick figure who looks small like a child has the right arm and leg uplifted on a set of bars, with the left leg resting on the lowest bar and the left hand grabbing the left post. There's a red circle and line through this ill-advised action.
But perhaps the most confusing sign greeted us shortly after arriving in Canada, in the dark driving through rain. The Gryphon was already exhausted from our day-long drive from the Philadelphia area when a thunderstorm hit in the middle of our dinner stop at a small restaurant near Lake George in New York.
By the time we reached the border, the rain was petering out, so that we passed through customs in a lull. The misty rain that dribbled down afterwards was only enough to produce rainbows in the twilight sky.
Immediately, the difference in signs became clear. Most of them were in French, with images to emphasize the message. A few were only images, such as one that made my husband exclaim, "What does that mean? Are planes going to be landing on the highway?"
Our son, KFP, a whiz at looking up information on his phone, soon had the answer. "No, Dad. It means there may be low-flying aircraft in this area."
My husband breathed a sigh of relief before adding, "Wait. What?"
Fortunately, we didn't get buzzed by any planes during our journey.
Fig. 4: A silhouetted plane flies over a diagonal strip of two-lane highway, on a yellow diamond background.
As we wound through the city this past week, we encountered locals and fellow tourists who spoke a variety of languages. Most of the time, we ended up conversing in English, although sometimes a mix of English and French. Nearly all of the adults in our group had taken French in high school or college, but it had been decades since then, and lack of use had made us rusty. My son had taken two years of French but often faltered with very simple phrases. Fortunately, the Canadians were kind to us and changed languages when they saw us struggling.
Once, I spoke with our hotel maid, who spoke only French and Spanish. My sister's husband was the only person in our group who knew Spanish. Unfortunately, he wasn't present, so she and I bumbled along: her in French, me in English and French, both of us making hand gestures to indicate what we were trying to communicate.
By and large, the people we encountered were "super" (just like the word "super," but said with a French accent). They saw our large group of combined families -- mine, my sister's, my brother's, and our dad -- which ranged in age from 10 to 82, and they just wanted to help us, you know?
We were "friends" to both our concierge and the tour guide at our last trip, to La Citadel de Quebec, a fortress on a hill that houses the Royal 22nd Regiment, the only French-speaking regiment in Canada today.
"Come this way, friends," the tour guide, Beatrice, would say, with her wide smile. And we'd follow her anywhere, even into a jail cell.
Certainly, French Canadians -- or the Quebecois, as they call themselves -- understand better than most the importance of communication. The fact that languages are interchangeable, as long as eventually, you get your point across.
I contemplated all these things as we left Canada, passing again the yellow diamond plane signs and imagining a pilot flying low overhead. "Goodbye, friend," he'd call to us. "A bientot!" ("See you soon!")
A rainbow greeted us in Canada, through brightly blue-gray skies above a yellow and green field with far distant white buildings.
The view from the Funicular: a strip of mostly old-looking buildings in the lower left, in tans and grays with splashes of orange, yellow, and red. In the middle ground stretches the wide, brackish brown St. Lawrence River, atop of which floats the white and blue ferry. On the far distant banks is a misty glimpse of an expanse of green and small buildings, which is the city of Levis (pronounced "Leh-VEE").
A cannon and a view of the outer wall of the Citadelle de Quebec, a fortress in Quebec City. At the right of the image, the cannon is heavy, black, and pointed skyward. A brick pathway and a snaky asphalt road lead diagonally from the bottom left corner to the middle distance. Bright green grass surrounds the brick path and alongside the road. In the far distance is the stone wall, seemingly small in this photo but actually at least 30 feet high.
The Chateau de Fronterac, seen from the Citadelle. Rising out of a sea of smaller stone and brick buildings which are interspersed with trees, the Chateau dominates the skyline. Its peaked roofs with green tiles evoke a European castle. The most impressive feature is the red brick tower, with its black-tiled roof, that rises near the front of the building, rectangular with a peaked roof and multiple stone spires.
My son, my husband, and me on the deck of the ferry between Quebec City and Levis. My sister took this selfie, but I've cropped her out, for privacy reasons. Behind us is the white railing that sported the sign, along with other blue benches, which would soon be occupied, and more white painted railings above the captain's cabin. Barely visible, hanging over the cabin, is the Quebec flag, with its fields of blue, cross of white and white fleur de lis.
I'd like to thank The Gryphon for suggesting this way of approaching the prompt, as we were driving home from our journey and my brain and body were exhausted.
As you might have guessed, I had to draw the "no reaching" sign myself, since I couldn't find anything similar. The other signs I found online, but they are almost identical to what we saw. If I'd known I would have been writing this entry, I would have photographed all the fun signs I saw!
My aching legs demanding a rest, I plopped down onto a low, smooth wall. My son and his cousins were about to ride the Zenith, a hubless Ferris wheel with a steampunk look inside the Mega Parc, an amusement park in the Galeries de la Capitale, a very large mall in Quebec City, Canada.
Just as my butt hit the seat, my sister exclaimed, "You're not supposed to sit there!"
"You're not?" I asked, with audible distress.
She pointed to a sticker affixed to the bench that said something in French and included a stick figure apparently falling off a bench, with a red line through it. My exhausted mind agreed with her that it was an odd way of telling people not to sit there. I don't know: maybe the surface was occasionally slippery, in colder times of year? Maybe if you sat there, you were in the drop zone of the Zenith and could get a face-full of whatever careened off the Ferris wheel?
Fig. 1: A stick figure sits on a badly-drawn rectangular bench, leaning to the right with a hand reaching down. A red circle with a slash through it overlays the awkward scene.
With a sigh, I heaved myself back into a roughly vertical position and followed her to the gate where our kids would exit once the ride ended, so that we could crane our necks and experience the ride vicariously.
At the close of the ride, we met up with my husband, The Gryphon, who was comfortably seated on one of the prohibited smooth ledges.
"You're not allowed to sit on those," I informed him.
"No," he said. "You are not allowed to stick your hand over the ledge when the Zamboni is in use."
I finally tried to grok the French in the sign and realized that he was probably right. It mentioned something about "mains" (hands) and "pieds" (feet), as well as "Zamboni." The enticing ledge, it turns out, was just above an oval ice-skating track, the Patinarium, that wound around the amusement park area.
As if to prove the point, the Zamboni, painted a dull copper and encrusted with decorative gears in keeping with the steampunk theme, slid by on the ice, the operator giving us a wry smile.
Throughout our experiences in Quebec City, deep in the French-speaking part of Canada, we found that most signs communicated messages in more than one way. Either they'd be in both French and English, or they'd be in French with a visual symbol. Some of those, however, were so unique they were hard for us Americans to parse.
This was only the third day of our family vacation in Quebec City, but the previous day had involved hours of walking as we visited the Lower Town (Basse-Ville) shops and then took the Funicular to take a near-vertical ride up to Upper Town (Haute-Ville) to view Le Chateau Frontenac, an historic hotel built in 1893 that looks like an old-world castle.
On our ride up, we noted a sign so important it used three ways of communicating: English ("No leaning"), French ("Pas de penchement") and an image of a stick figure seemingly being way too relaxed against a vertical surface, with a line through it. The sign was stuck on the front and back glass doors of the steel-and-glass box we were riding to the neighborhood on the Cap Diamant cliff above us.
Fig. 2: A stick figure leans against a vertical line representing a wall. The stick figure has one knee bent, one leg straight, and a bent elbow to look awfully relaxed, considering how deep the fall would be on the other side of the glass. There's a circle and red line through the image.
That one was easy. Also easy, the image of an enterprising stick figure, its chunky arms and legs askew on a railing, indicating someone (most likely a child) climbing. Of course, the requisite red circle and slash indicated this was an action not to emulate.
This particular sticker appeared on the top deck of the Quebec City-Levis Ferry, next to a similar barred railing. My sister pointed this one out to me as our families, along with our dad and our brother's daughter, sat on benches near the railing as we waited for the ferry to take off. We agreed it's probably an ongoing problem there, as children are basically monkeys.
Fig. 3: A stick figure who looks small like a child has the right arm and leg uplifted on a set of bars, with the left leg resting on the lowest bar and the left hand grabbing the left post. There's a red circle and line through this ill-advised action.
But perhaps the most confusing sign greeted us shortly after arriving in Canada, in the dark driving through rain. The Gryphon was already exhausted from our day-long drive from the Philadelphia area when a thunderstorm hit in the middle of our dinner stop at a small restaurant near Lake George in New York.
By the time we reached the border, the rain was petering out, so that we passed through customs in a lull. The misty rain that dribbled down afterwards was only enough to produce rainbows in the twilight sky.
Immediately, the difference in signs became clear. Most of them were in French, with images to emphasize the message. A few were only images, such as one that made my husband exclaim, "What does that mean? Are planes going to be landing on the highway?"
Our son, KFP, a whiz at looking up information on his phone, soon had the answer. "No, Dad. It means there may be low-flying aircraft in this area."
My husband breathed a sigh of relief before adding, "Wait. What?"
Fortunately, we didn't get buzzed by any planes during our journey.
Fig. 4: A silhouetted plane flies over a diagonal strip of two-lane highway, on a yellow diamond background.
As we wound through the city this past week, we encountered locals and fellow tourists who spoke a variety of languages. Most of the time, we ended up conversing in English, although sometimes a mix of English and French. Nearly all of the adults in our group had taken French in high school or college, but it had been decades since then, and lack of use had made us rusty. My son had taken two years of French but often faltered with very simple phrases. Fortunately, the Canadians were kind to us and changed languages when they saw us struggling.
Once, I spoke with our hotel maid, who spoke only French and Spanish. My sister's husband was the only person in our group who knew Spanish. Unfortunately, he wasn't present, so she and I bumbled along: her in French, me in English and French, both of us making hand gestures to indicate what we were trying to communicate.
By and large, the people we encountered were "super" (just like the word "super," but said with a French accent). They saw our large group of combined families -- mine, my sister's, my brother's, and our dad -- which ranged in age from 10 to 82, and they just wanted to help us, you know?
We were "friends" to both our concierge and the tour guide at our last trip, to La Citadel de Quebec, a fortress on a hill that houses the Royal 22nd Regiment, the only French-speaking regiment in Canada today.
"Come this way, friends," the tour guide, Beatrice, would say, with her wide smile. And we'd follow her anywhere, even into a jail cell.
Certainly, French Canadians -- or the Quebecois, as they call themselves -- understand better than most the importance of communication. The fact that languages are interchangeable, as long as eventually, you get your point across.
I contemplated all these things as we left Canada, passing again the yellow diamond plane signs and imagining a pilot flying low overhead. "Goodbye, friend," he'd call to us. "A bientot!" ("See you soon!")
A rainbow greeted us in Canada, through brightly blue-gray skies above a yellow and green field with far distant white buildings.
The view from the Funicular: a strip of mostly old-looking buildings in the lower left, in tans and grays with splashes of orange, yellow, and red. In the middle ground stretches the wide, brackish brown St. Lawrence River, atop of which floats the white and blue ferry. On the far distant banks is a misty glimpse of an expanse of green and small buildings, which is the city of Levis (pronounced "Leh-VEE").
A cannon and a view of the outer wall of the Citadelle de Quebec, a fortress in Quebec City. At the right of the image, the cannon is heavy, black, and pointed skyward. A brick pathway and a snaky asphalt road lead diagonally from the bottom left corner to the middle distance. Bright green grass surrounds the brick path and alongside the road. In the far distance is the stone wall, seemingly small in this photo but actually at least 30 feet high.
The Chateau de Fronterac, seen from the Citadelle. Rising out of a sea of smaller stone and brick buildings which are interspersed with trees, the Chateau dominates the skyline. Its peaked roofs with green tiles evoke a European castle. The most impressive feature is the red brick tower, with its black-tiled roof, that rises near the front of the building, rectangular with a peaked roof and multiple stone spires.
My son, my husband, and me on the deck of the ferry between Quebec City and Levis. My sister took this selfie, but I've cropped her out, for privacy reasons. Behind us is the white railing that sported the sign, along with other blue benches, which would soon be occupied, and more white painted railings above the captain's cabin. Barely visible, hanging over the cabin, is the Quebec flag, with its fields of blue, cross of white and white fleur de lis.
I'd like to thank The Gryphon for suggesting this way of approaching the prompt, as we were driving home from our journey and my brain and body were exhausted.
As you might have guessed, I had to draw the "no reaching" sign myself, since I couldn't find anything similar. The other signs I found online, but they are almost identical to what we saw. If I'd known I would have been writing this entry, I would have photographed all the fun signs I saw!
