Accosted by French Nannies in Montreal

Montreal is a lovely city. I have heard this many times from many different people and now that I am in Montreal I can attest to the fact that it is, indeed a wonderful city. Today I was walking around with my cheesehead on, which is what I do when I am at a festival and need to promote my show. Montreal is great, people yell things at you in both French and English. The anglos yell, "Cheesehead!," the francophiles yell "tete du fromage!" I had a French speaking butcher yell something about the Green Bay Packers at me. At first I thought he was yelling something nice, maybe he was a fan of the Packers. Then he ripped open his butcher's coat and revealed a Pittsburgh Steelers shirt. That's when I realized that he was taunting me. For some reason I find it hard to tell when someone is saying something mean in French. It seems like such a nice, soft, open language with lots of beautiful vowel sounds that I tend to think everyone who is talking is saying something really intelligent or really polite - as if everyone is speaking impromptu love poems into their cellphones while walking down the street. It took the butcher ripping open his coat for me to realize that is not always the case. Later I was walking down the street and I ran into 5 women all wearing pink aprons. They appeared to be on a coffee break. They started speaking excitedly to me in French, pointing at my cheesehead and laughing. When they realized that I was an English speaker they asked me to play a song on my guitar, so I got it out and started playing a tune. I am not sure they totally understood what I was saying, because when i asked if they wanted me to sing a song about cheese, they started making a song up themselves, in broken English. One of them grabbed my cheesehead and put it on her head, much to the delight of her friends. That is when one of the other ladies ran into a storefront near where we were and dragged out a man who looked to be there boss. I saw that the building they came out of was a nursery for children. They were daycare workers, kind of like preschool nannies. Somehow, I had found the nannies. I asked them if they worked with children and they replied, "Yah." I told them that I teach music to kids in New York. They said, "Yah." I told them that they should have me visit the nursery and sing for the kids. They replied, "Yah." I asked them what they thought of my cheesehead. They said "Yah," then laughed and walked away. So I am pretty sure that I was mocked by both a butcher and a group of nannies. Not bad for my first day in Montreal. It wasn't so bad though, because after the nannies left I saw that one of them had left around 50 cents in my guitar case. Playing my guitar for nannies, getting yelled at by crazy men who wield knives on a daily basis...being in Montreal is starting to remind me of my life in New York.