Holidaying with the “hyper-disciplined” can be an ordeal, says Guillemette Faure in Le Monde. Most people, when they arrive at their destination, locate the beaches, the bakery, and the sun-trapping terraces. But there are also those who first find the village’s big bins for household rubbish bags. “They play sports at dawn and pick up croissants on their way back from jogging.” They check tide times, market days, authorised parking spaces. They open the lids of milk bottles properly and never use other people’s chargers to power their smartphones. “If there is a summit in the vicinity, it will have to be climbed.” Most of us “wait for the holidays to become more mediocre versions of ourselves”; these monsters maintain the same frenetic pace of their work lives.
The hyper-disciplined often pretend not to be judgemental about the rest of us. But it’s when they address their own children that we find out what they really think. (“No Faustine, you, you don’t drink Coke…”) Holiday perfection is only compromised when something is missing. But if they’ve forgotten a cap, swimsuit, or sunscreen, they’d rather make “detours to distant supermarkets” or accept painful sunburns than borrow kit from someone else. “Because the kings of self-discipline hate getting help, let alone asking for it.”