Sacre bleu to you
by Bryce Martin

"Sacre bleu," I would say, as often as I felt it fit comfortably in whatever situation I came upon. Not that our conversations actually stayed on a line of thought. I was always experimenting with words and phrases I had either made up whole cloth or borrowed elsewhere to see if I could get them into the Galena language.

Andre, the Frenchman in the Blackhawk comic books had already given me "Oui, oui." Andre said "Sacre bleu" in circumstances that led me to believe he was cussing at a low level. Sort of like our outbursts of "good gosh" or "gee whiz" when we were particularly vexed about something. Though, I never knew exactly what it meant, it seemed to have the stuff cuss words are made of, if you said it just the way you would a standard cuss term. And, like some such expressions, I thought it would work just as well as a term of surprise.

As a classmate and I were walking along a school sidewalk, I spied a glint and reached and picked up a quarter. "Sacre bleu," I said. No response, except, "Wow, a quarter." I reasoned that finding money probably distracted from what it was I said.

It went on that way. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get "sacre bleu" in the streets, I couldn't get anyone to pick up on it and use it in their own way.

"Que sera." All it took was one song to get that one going.

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