French Ambiguities, Part I

I worked in new product development for 6 years. One of the things I would always jot down twice a year for my self-appraisals (for performance reviews) was: thriving in an ambiguous environment.

In France, I seem to face ambiguities left and right.

The cheek-kissing, that the French are so fond of, is just one example. Now, I rather like the kissing; it forces you to stop and acknowledge the person you are greeting, rather than a half-hearted "hey how are ya" while you are already going past the person. However, it's very ambiguous how many times you kiss the person's cheeks. At first I was told it was regional. Parisians, with the hustle and bustle that comes with big city life, kiss twice; the southern French kiss four times, and in some other regions like Brittany people kiss three times. No rhyme or reason why - at least nobody can explain to me why this is the case. Also aggravating is the fact that there always seems to be someone who lives by the exception - and I have often experienced that subtle jutting of the cheek only to be rebuffed, or puckering up only to be spurned. How do the French themselves know? Or do they just accept that occasional fleeting embarrassing nanosecond as a minor nuisance? Being a foreigner here, I rather hate the thought of performing a faux-pas, and always feel very embarrassed.

The French start kissing at a very early age. They kiss very freely. They kiss very frequently. The first time you are introduced to a someone on a street, they kiss you. You say goodbye to that person one minute later, there they are again, kissing you. And 99% of the time, it's a genuine kiss smack on the cheeks, not air kisses. Men do not shy away from kissing one another. By far the most kissing I ever saw done was at a New Year's Eve party, where there were 4 kisses to each and every person present - it was way over the top for me, not to mention exhausting (especially when they do not start eating dinner until after the midnight kisses!)

I'm ok with all the kissing. I just want to know how many to each person! Even with my American or English friends here we kiss now (hmm, but now that I think about it, we usually do two instead of three that is prevalent in Brittany - where did that come from?? As in, we-are-not-really-from-here mentality?). Kinda funny, but I guess when in Rome...! There has been no anti-kissing movement that I've heard of, even when the "gastro" viruses seem endemic, so I guess I just have to learn to deal with this ambiguity!