Boing Boing

Boing Boing

American habits that baffle the French

Ellsworth Toohey
Jul 16, 2026
∙ Paid

American habits the French find bizarre — zoetnet / CC BY 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Kimberly Wheeler moved her family from California to Aix-en-Provence three years ago, and she keeps getting the same small reaction from French neighbors: a furrowed brow, a soft “bfff,” a shrug. In a Substack essay, she catalogs the ordinary American habits that set it off.

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