Parisian Food

Parisian Food

After seeing all the amazing tourist sites in Paris, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and others, my wife, Suzanne, and I sought out some lesser known sites. We passed the street where the famous sculptor Rodin was born and came to an ancient-looking church called Saint-Medard. Even from a distance I was mesmerized when I saw the gray stone church with shrubberies framing the entrance and a lone tree rising above it. It wasn’t as impressive as the major tourist sites, yet, it fascinated me. I had one of those deja vu moments, though I don't put much stock in these feelings. And, maybe, I’d seen Saint-Medard in pictures in a book or on the web in passing and forgotten about it.

When Suzanne and I stood in front of the church, our bodies began trembling. Frightened, Suzanne turned to me: “What’s happening, Bob?”

“I don’t know and I can’t stop whatever it is!”

“I can’t either! she yelled,” and we both fell on the ground shaking uncontrollably.

Curiously, the fear evaporated and an almost insane happiness shot through our bodies. But, in some sort of trance state that seemed to go on forever, neither of us could talk.

An ambulance screeched in. Medics hauled our bodies into the back of the ambulance and drove us to a hospital. After a few minutes in the ambulance, Suzanne and I began to come out of the trance and the shaking subsided. At the hospital the doctors found nothing wrong with us, a mystery they said, but told us to call a doctor for additional tests if the symptoms returned.

I was glad it was over and would have been content to forget the matter. But, Suzanne, a person who has to know the answers to everything, drives me crazy sometimes, believed our convulsions had some sort of connection to the church and began to research it on the internet. I was just glad we didn’t have some medical condition like epilepsy.

“Bob! Look at this,” she said, showing me a website about a Jansenist priest buried at the church cemetery in 1726. After the priest's death people called Convulsionaries visited his tomb and allegedly fell into trance states with their bodies shaking uncontrollably.

Also a believer in mystical matters, Suzanne constructed all these elaborate theories about us being soul mates and Convulsionaries in past lives which supposedly explained why we experienced the trance states when we stood in front of Saint-Medard.

Though I had the deja vu feeling -- and there's surely a logical, scientific explanation for those feelings -- I’m a down-to-earth guy and not about all that off-the-wall twilight zone stuff. I think it was just something we ate. Not to knock Parisian food. God knows it’s among the world’s best.