rumble on the 52

A little more ethnographie from the world of the Paris bus.

We just came back on the bus from meeting some friends at Parc Monceau, a nineteenth-century era park so well-groomed that all the ladies match their little dogs. Our crowd was slightly less elegant, and peanut-butter-stained, but G and the love of his life, Amelie, were so adorable walking everywhere hand-in-hand that a Frenchwoman stopped to take their picture. Points to us. We sat down in the sun next to a sweet elderly lady who warned that her small dog was “trés méchant” on account of having been hit it its youth, but that she would be watching carefully and we should not worry about our children being bitten. Said dog was lying on the ground, asleep. After that comforting bit of dialogue, she added, somewhat mysteriously, that you should never lend your dog to anyone, it’s a bad bargain. We tried to absorb this advice with all the seriousness with which it had been given, and moved a little further to the end of the bench. She was true to her word, though, and we didn’t hear a peep from her King Charles.

Tooth and claw were a little more evident on the ride home. The bus was packed with the post-prandial crowd – there were three strollers, which is technically not allowed, but they let us get away with it. At the Étoile, an elderly fat man lumbered aboard and planted himself in the middle of the aisle with a look that dared anyone to challenge him. At the next stop, even more people got on, and the bus driver switched on the canned announcement advising everyone to move to the back of the bus. An old woman wearing blue mascara and a fusty chignon poked the man in the shoulder. “Go ahead, sir,” she said (in French), “move to the back of the bus.”

“Move it yourself, b***.” (The French word he used was connasse, which is not very nice at all).

There was a pregnant pause, marked by the collective stopping of breath from everyone within hearing distance.

“I would,” she said clearly, drawing herself up to her full height, “but your fat ass is taking up all the space.”

The collective breath released with a grateful sigh. Touché.

“Shut up, you old hag,” he said.

“You shut it,” she said, shoving her way past him.

“Looks like you could use a diet, too,” he said, to her back, but his heart wasn’t in it.

When she got to the back of the bus, she grabbed the door rail. “My god, what an annoying old shit,” she said.

The woman standing next to me and I couldn’t help it – we burst into a fit of giggles. Old people. Cursing. On a French bus. (The only even remotely similar situation that has happened to me here was when I was pushing G around the grocery store with a full cast on his leg, and an older woman in a Chanel suit said, “Oh la la, ça c’est la merde, ça.”)

In English, I am known to appreciate a well-placed “gros mot,” but I would never dream of attempting it in French. Someone gave us a dictionary of French argot before we left that has carefully placed stars next to the words that have the most, er, shock value, but I’m still playing it safe, trying to make sure my subjects and verbs agree. I’m embarrassed to admit, however, that after more than a year and a half here, I’m more proud of being able to understand that conversation on the bus than of being able to read Molière. Vive L’Academie Française.