The Friday before Christmas was a double festive day for all: it was the last day of school for 2013 and my mother was in town. It was also a day where four métro lines were out of service for the afternoon forcing me to restructure my commute to school. Heeding to RATP's tweet advising passengers to avoid lines 2,6,10 and 11, with a few changes here and there, we made it to the safe line 7.
But of course, 7 had to join in on the fun too.
Holding bags of American chocolates and presents for the little ones, my mother and I sat still at the Pyramides station in a stuffy and closed métro car waiting sans announcements for what felt like longer than ten minutes.
"Are you sure the numba 7 wasn't on the list of out of service subways?" my mother asked loudly, letting her voice bounce off the walls of the enclosed car.
"Yes, I'm sure." I hissed, anxiously looking at the time.
"Well it smells like farts in here." she announced, fanning herself with her Us Weekly magazine.
She was absolutely right. It did and by the quiet chuckles from several passengers who apparently understood English, we weren't the only ones who recognized it.
"Throw mama from the train." I slowly turned to her, playfully threatening her with a raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah and then what?" she retorted. "You'll be even later for school filling out the reports."
The conductor finally made his announcement, which I'm not sure if it's the fault of my French comprehension or the shoddy métro "sound system" resembled the incoherent grownups in the Peanuts cartoons.
"Whah, whah, whah," he declared, "Et whah, whah, whah. Merci beaucoup."
Most likely it was some presumptuous message thanking me for my patience and understanding, so it was probably better that I didn't understand it. When the clunky doors glided back open to allow air into the warm car, I interpreted it as encouragement to take an alternative route. We were getting their by foot. With my mother in tow, we ran from Pyramids to Gare de L'Est.
Just to give you an idea...
Huffing and puffing with linked arms, we shuffled down the rues with my mother emitting her discomfort through comments and cursing, and we wove in and out of pedestrians shouting "Excusez-nous!". Catching a glimpse of us in the reflection of a boutique, the two of us looked like little Italian mamadellas running after jewel thieves in Paris.
We made it to school and heading straight for the cantine; an after school program for some kids or a waiting point for pissed off kids whose parents or nannies are late.
Franc, of course didn't notice that we were late or we were even there for that matter as we found him rolling around with his friends on the floor, wired up on sugar. Thomas on the other hand posed more of a challenge...where was Thomas?
"It smells like farts in here too!" my mother again declared as we charged around the classroom looking for child number 2.
But again, she was right. It did.
The maîtresse (which always amuses me that it means both mistress and teacher in French) lead me to Thomas who was crouched in the corner with tears streaming down his face and yogurt encrusted around his mouth.
"Oh, no, what's wrong?" I said as I picked him up.
"You forgot me!" he cried.
"Non, non, le train était en pané" I said, switching to French in order to be clear.
Or was I?
"En pané?" he asked, staring at me, softly blinking his row of dark eyelashes.
"Oui, en pané." I responded, putting him down. "Desolée."
"What do you mean, en pané?" he insisting, looking lost and almost desperate.
"En panne you mean," the maîtresse who was within earshot gently suggested, "The train was en panne because pané means breaded."
Well that explains his confused look. I don't know what I would have done at the age of 4, if someone had told me that they were late because their train was breaded.
After explaining the métro trouble, Thomas finally accepted his reality yet offered a sound solution on how I could have avoided the entire catastrophe.
"You should have taken the TGV," he said with an assuring nod, "It's a lot faster than the métro."
It most certainly is, Thomas.
