Entre Deux Chaises
Pardon My French
English offers many ways to describe a dilemma. Thus, when faced with ‘Hobson’s choice’, Anglophones can confess to being caught ‘between Scylla and Charybdis’, ‘between the devil and the deep blue sea’, or, more commonly, ‘between a rock and a hard place’.
When, however, we find ourselves ‘betwixt and between’ a happier set of options, our language fails us. Thus, we must resort to importation and, in particular, to the French phrase assis entre deux chaises.
Reduced to its elements, assis entre deux chaises means ‘seated between two chairs’. When, however, applied to the situations experienced by social animals, it describes the awkward feeling that results from a failure to resolve a binary embarrassment of riches.
Thus, when Digby Dinwiddie simultaneously received two invitations to the Sadie Hawkins Dance, one from the winsome Anna Phylaxis and the other from the charming M. Alice Aforethought, he found himself assis entre deux chaises. That is, he knew that if he failed to make a timely decision, he would disappoint both of the ladies in question, thereby ‘falling between two stools’.
Speaking of which, while the range of meanings expressed by assis entre deux chaises and ‘falling between two stools’ can sometimes overlap, the former lies largely in the realm of anticipation. That is, while those who ‘fall between two stools’ have resolved their dilemmas by choosing an intermediary option, a person assis entre deux chaises will eventually settle on one of the two happy alternatives available to him.
Assis entre deux chaises can also apply to a person making a transition from one realm to another. So, between the time Reba McIntyre finished her last concert of the season and the moment she began to rehearse the first episode of her eponymous television program, the singer-turned-actress may have felt assis entre deux chaises.
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