"Are you berry berry silly, are you berry berry fat..."
Turns out there are worse things than Getting Hit On in the Metro by creepy middle-aged men. What's that, you ask? Getting Accosted By Seemingly Normal People Who Are Actually Certifiable. Just minding my own business today, heading home from French class on the ol' metro, having just gotten on line 9 at
Strasbourg St-Denis. As we get to the next stop, this 30-something woman hops up from her fold-down seat near the opening door and sits down next to me, fold-down seat near the non-functioning door. I thought maybe she had a weird thing about people walking by her, but oh, no, wait... of course. She wants to talk to me.
Asks if I'm French, I say no. She goes into this diatribe about a woman with glasses who was evil and used her power to abuse Moroccan children. She has an accent that I find difficult to understand and the things that seem to be coming out of her mouth just can't be something that a normal person would say, so I assume that ye olde language barrier strikes again. Also, about six seconds into this, I realize that this is a conversation I really don't want to have, so what do I do? Play dumb! I tell her I don't understand and apologize, hoping that will be the end of it. But no... hearing my accent, she asks if I speak English.
So now, I get the English version of the anger, which includes several important points:
- The woman who was sitting across the way from the crazy woman's original seat is apparently Hitler and the Devil all rolled into one.
- "Men sex" is the root of all evil. (I thought that was girls?)
- General confusion about the crazy emmanating from someone's mouth may be an indicator that the confused person doesn't know what the word "sex" means.
In the English version, I can't help but get that yes, the crazy woman is indeed accusing our fellow passenger of infanticide. I start to tell the Crazy that I'm sure that woman is very nice (also: wearing cute skirt), but that's when the Crazy tells me the story about how our fellow passenger married Algerians (plural? bigamy is a thing now, huh?) and so she burned babies. Because of men sex. Call me naive, but I was trying to understand what she was talking about, and this part I clearly didn't get - how are those things related? This led her to ask me "Sex? You know sex?" How does one answer that question? "Yes, I've heard of the concept"? "Not so familiar with this Sex you talk of, but I'm pretty tight with his buddy Kiss"?
This entire time, sitting across from me, listening to the whole conversation is this woman with the standard mini-Nefertiti hair so many French women have. Major sidebar: it's like an entire demographic here is channeling a skinny version of that PTA mom who was always hitting on Joey on
Full House. Tip: if your appearance resembles a minor character on Full House, time for a bit o' help. (I hope you all appreciate the self-control it took not to use Cut. It. Out.) Anyway, so every time I look over at Skinny Joey Lover, she gives me this sympathetic look and makes it clear she has no idea what the Crazy is talking about. I must say, the Solidarity On The Metro part was sorta nice, even if what precipitated it was uncomfortable in sandpaper-knickers proportions. I ended up getting off the Metro a stop early because I was sick of trying to be empathetic without agreeing that yes, the nice woman on the train is Minnie Castevet's role model.
And finally... (bringing this all back to me, because that's apparently all I do) if anyone knows how to quit appearing so obviously foreign I'd appreciate some help. I'm pretty sure the Crazy would have left me alone if I'd seemed French.
