Smoot Leads Tour de Paris

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Louvre-worthy? "Scott Smoot en Triomphe," pastel courtesy Android

Since September 26, I've biked 223 miles on trails around Atlanta. On the map of my virtual tour of the world, that distance takes me from London to Paris, where I learned two lessons.

In the summer of 1983, I chaperoned a dozen students in France, two from St. Andrew's Episcopal School where I taught in Mississippi, and 10 from schools in California and New Jersey. To those 10, I was just some young guy without authority.

On the day we had scheduled the Louvre, my wards showed no interest in our tour guide's guidance; they just wanted to see the Mona Lisa. I dismissed the docent with apologies, joined the herd around Leonardo's painting -- "so disappointing, so small" -- and issued an ultimatum: "Tour with me or just go wherever you want, and meet me at 4:30 in the café across the street."

Only John Teal stayed with me; the others couldn't leave fast enough. John, a rising freshman at St. Andrew's, had been a top student in an 8th grade class blessed with many top students. He was a gentle soul, inquisitive, and very funny. We found art we liked in the Louvre, had lunch, then wandered out into Paris. The Arc de Triomphe was our goal, because so many other streets fanned out from it.

My first lesson was at the top of the arch. When we arrived, before we even glanced at the scenery, John and I bent our heads over a map to see where we were. That struck me as funny, because any person in the world would recognize that place. But I realized that we were living a parable for what education is: knowing where you are means seeing where you've been and imagining where you want to go. That was the essence of what I wanted to teach students through history, fiction, and writing personal essays -- then, and four decades after.

My second lesson was impressed upon me when John and I returned to the meeting place. We'd heard a street musician near the Arc sing for an hour, just one line from one song, Paul Simon's "The Boxer" (Li-li-li-...); we'd browsed stores on the Champs Elysées, criss-crossed the town, located a site from A Tale of Two Cities, found the only Episcopal Church in Paris, and sprinted back to the café to arrive exactly on time. All the others were there, demanding to know where we'd been. They'd gone straight from the Louvre to the café and had not budged in all the hours since. "We're so bored!" they groaned.

Boredom is a choice, I would tell my students ever after. You can exert yourself like John, searching Paris for things he could connect with -- as he'd done in school with language, history, Shakespeare and Dickens -- or you can "just hang out" and be bored, even in the middle of one of the world's greatest cities.

John (R) with a friend from CA

[For an essay about what France has meant to US culture, including an experience with asparagus that changed my life, see my review of David McCullough's book The Greater Journey (10/2011). It's a favorite among my essays.]

←← | ← || → Use arrows to follow the entire bike tour from the start.