Yesterday, heading home from work where my kids, after heavy consideration over grenadine and Petit Ecolier chocolate-plated biscuits, disclosed my age. To me. According to them, I am six and a half years old. I think it's the "half" that's really showing my age to them.
Not wanting their little brains to short-circuit over my true age (I'm not even sure they can count all the way up there!), I'm just going to go with it and allow them to think that I am twenty-five and a half years younger. Why not? Being six was awesome. By that age, I had Jem and all of the Hologram dolls, eventually working my way up to the Misfits which my mother decided was more for seven years old girls.
Hoping off the 7 on my ride home from work, I connected to one of my favorite lines, the 14, a line that slashes right down Paris and secured myself a seat despite it being rush-hour. At Châtelet, a cumbersome older man boarded. Like my students, I'm terrible at guessing people's age (just ask Sara Louise), so I'm going to say he's in his late fifties. Before embarking on the 10 minute underground stretch to Gare de Lyon, he spotted the empty seat in front of me and staked his claims on it. As he approached, I couldn't help notice his physique; vast and fleshy where the shape of his bulbous lower abdomen was showcased through his faded and rather tight dungarees.
The jolt of the train as it pulled out of the station forced him to lose his balance. And that's when he fell onto me. Okay so the Jean Dujardin double who had boarded the train just as the horn alerted passengers that the doors will be closing, yeah, why couldn't he have been the one to fall on me?
Milliseconds before contact was made, my feline instincts ricocheted my forearms up to press against my chest with my palms facing him like little paws, and my neck swiftly twisted to my left facing the window, wanting to avoid facial contact. He clumsily tried to get himself up and off of me, using the metal handle bars of my seat to pull him up, and with a quick breeze of his breath on my cheek was when I learned that he had had a few beers and was in desperate need of a root canal.
I helped him up, pushing with my own body weight while illustrating my discomfort with a light groan. "Jean" as well as other passengers looked on with intrigue at the wackiness of the situation, and once my "descendant" was safely back in his seat, the remainder of the ride was spent unspoken. He didn't excuse himself which would then lead to my forced but obligatory "no it's okay" or rather, in French, "c'est pas grave". Nothing. We sat in silence, occasionally making uncomfortable eye contact through the black reflection of the window as we whizzed through the suctioning tunnel. Gare de Lyon couldn't have come any faster but when it did, I was pleased to let myself off, commencing the third and final leg of my commute.
Yesterday was certainly not your garden-variety of commutes, even here in Paris where I've certainly seen worse. But it sure beat the homeless man at Les Halles last week who spit in my direction, obliging me to dodge his gray phlegm glob by leaping mid-air.
I don't remember the New York City subway keeping me guessing as much, which makes me wonder - is it the Paris metro that is crazier than most public transportation or am I just more aware here?
Also, the winner for the Bertrand Burgalat show this weekend in the Marais is.... Milsters from Little Pieces of Light!! Felicitations! Thank you for participating in the contest! Have fun and please report back and tell me how it was!