overheard at the airport

"A Frenchman tried to get mommy to break up with daddy on the plane just now," said a girl in her 20's seated next to her mother. "He said, '22 years of marriage is too long.'" Four comments.

1. Good job upholding the stereotype of a nation, Frenchie. Were you also wearing a horizontally-striped shirt and beret, on strike in an invisible glass box while you chain-smoked with one hand and held a tiny dog with the other, your nose sniffing a fine bordeaux and your mouth full of baguette, cheese, and words of surrender?
2. The daughter had clearly witnessed this first-hand. I choose to envision it with her in the middle seat.
3. The mother and daughter in question were continuing on to Minneapolis, the waiting area of which flight is where I overheard them. The Frenchman, unless he was skulking about, was not. Unless he was proposing entry into the 10-kilometer-high club to a married woman with her daughter sitting next to her, it's pretty stupid to hit on someone who lives in a different city than you're going to on a continent you don't live on.
4. In his defense, the general consensus in France, at least as reflected in my language partners, is in fact "22 years of marriage is too long." As soon as the kids are old enough, man finds a new girlfriend and woman gets a job as a therapist.