This week, I’ve been traveling to a medical meeting outside the country. The “Spine Arthroplasty Society” is being held in Montreal, Quebec. The city is beautiful and decidedly French. It’s so French they have a law requiring all outdoor signs be in French, and if they catch you with an outdoor sign in English, you get fined. By the language police. I’m not making this up! But what has struck me is that if you don’t speak the language of a country, you are at the mercy of the locals. You have to trust total strangers to be kind to you. And in my experience, they usually are very kind indeed. Why?