Lie #5 - first ladies

I spent much of the day on the streets of Paris selling Norwegian pickeled herring. Although I cornered the market recently, it is not selling as rapidly or for as high a price as I expected.

While I was out on Rue Montainge who should come up to me all smiles, but The First Lady of France, herself. I met Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Most people don't know that she is a math genius. She told me she was very impressed that I had won the Abel Prize.

I have to admit that I was a bit intimidated to meet this impressive woman in a grand fur coat surroudned by her security detail. When I explained to her what I was doing, she bought a can of pickeled herring from me. She didn't have euros on her--and I don't take credit cards. But fishing thrugh the pockets of her coat she found two Norwegian crowns; so, I sold her a tin of the herring.

Carla told me she had just got back from London, and the subject of the photograph of her that Christies is auctioning off came up.

I told her not to worry about that and to feel free to come to America anytime. We got over being prudes decades ago. In fact, we got over all of that stuff back when Eleanor Roosevelt posed for a photograph.

Although she was a great humanitarian and progressive thinker on human rights, a lot of people don't know that Eleanor Roosevelt was practically crippled with embarrassment about how pigeontoed-toed she was. She didn't want people to see her walk; so, she usually got pushed around in a wheelchair by her husband, which was quite difficult for him to do as he himself was in a wheelchair.