This is an unofficial warning to all potential American travelers to metropolitan France of a new ruse used by continental pickpockets in their pursuit of fat, traveling American wallets: a false display of enthusiasm for the new American president followed by a phony congratulatory hug. Followed by the real disappearance of said wallet.

It's very entrepreneurial, really. It's all about knowing your customer, in this case, traveling Americans desperately wanting to believe that the rest of the world doesn't hate us anymore or at least not as much as they did before last November, and observing about these acceptance-craving Americans that they are the only people in any major transport center in France who do not recoil in vociferous horror at the uninvited embrace of a total stranger. It works because it actually makes these Americans happy for two seconds. Until they pat their back pockets. By then, it is, of course, too, too late.

Whenever I hear the security warning in French train stations, or airports – "Please remain alert. There are pickpockets in the station." – it's all I can do to not jump up and start frisking myself all over to see what's missing.

I just know those pickpocket people are magnetically attracted to me in the way of all pairs of things that are magnetically attracted to each other. Two magnets, for example. Only with the magnetic partnerships I imagine, one of the things is always getting the better of the other: flame and moth, door and mat, scammer and schmuck.

So imagine my alarm when my husband called from a business trip to Paris last week to say that some strange guy in the train station ran up to him, congratulated him on the election of Barack Obama and then actually hugged him.

 I knew the punch line without being told: "And then I caught his hand in my pocket!"

You would only have to have glanced at my husband and lived in France for about 28 seconds to recognize the attempted scammer/schmuck pattern here. Because none of that scenario computes.

First of all, there is very little spontaneous hugging in France. In America, it happens all the time. True, a lot of it is in commercials and some of it is at parties and the hugger is half-drunk and the huggee is only being polite, but still, we hug. We hug people we know pretty much compulsively and people we don't, well, we often hug them compulsively too. I've been hugged by strangers in supermarkets and gas stations and standing in line for the ladies' room.

 French people don't hug. (Unless, of course, the nation is liberated from an invading force. Or Les Bleus win the World Cup. Such events happen on occasion but are considered exceptional.)

Second of all, my French husband was minding his own French business all by himself in a crowd of other own-business-minding French people when the swindler sprung.

"Oh congratulations you Americans! We love Obama! Did you vote him? Is good, good, good, you Obama Americans!" he enthused and hugged and groped simultaneously.

But how did the hugger spot my husband? My average-height, closer to scrawny than brawny, dark-haired husband most emphatically does not look American, or at least like the stereotypes of Americans that one thinks of when one is trying to spot Americans in a Parisian train station.

"Were you speaking English to somebody on the phone?" I asked.

"Même pas!"

"Did you wear your San Francisco Giants cap to Paris, for God's sake?"

"Mais non!"

"What were you wearing then? Some other dumb hat?"

"Non, non et non. I was wearing normal French clothes. But he almost got away with it though because I couldn't figure it out either. I was thinking 'How does he know my wife is American?' and trying to figure out if I knew him when I felt his hand in my pocket."

"I found a policier in the station and complained but he was gone."

 Why the hugger zeroed in on my husband remains a mystery.

But my theory is that the pickpocket was attracted to the same thing that first attracted me to my husband some 16 years ago: he is a smiler. This is an innate trait, possibly a genetic anomaly; he was just born smiley. Ten years in San Francisco only honed his grinning instinct.

But this tendency to smile at strangers is unusual enough in France that it allowed me to spot him in a smoky, crowded bar on Rue Mouffetard where he stood out as a beacon of unthreatening friendliness amongst his stylish, handsome, brooding, sulky, intimidating compatriots. Surely a trained pickpocket attuned to all the mannerisms and behavior of the various nationalities that cross his professional territory would notice the same. My husband probably caught his eye and smiled for a second without even realizing it.

So, my advice to Americans on vacation in France is this: stop smiling. You think it's only natural but this is only true for our cultural sub-species. Here in France, overt friendliness to strangers in public places marks you as some kind of mutant. Or an American. Also, don't wear shorts.

And, while I'm handing out advice, my suggestion to the French security agents in Paris Montparnasse is to start broadcasting a more specific warning message:

"There are pickpockets in the station. Yes, yes, if you like, we congratulate any visiting Americans for demonstrating that you're not all the racist cretins we normally would like to think you are. Don't hug anyone."