Because I take the train into work very early in the morning, I am witness to some of the Paris region's most bizarre species. For one, nobody in Paris goes to work before 7.00 am, besides myself and a few other weirdos. Us early morning workers truly are phenomenal, and the further out I get from the city, the more resilient and hardy I find my co-travellers. What are we doing going out to the countryside at 7.00 am? Sometimes I wonder if these people are just trying to get the most out of their visit to their mother/brother/whatever, and that I'm the only one actually crazy enough to go to work in the boondocks that early in the a.m.
Then again, most of the people waiting on the train platform with me are men, and we all know how crazy they are anyway. The lack of women is sorta freaky, with probably only one out of every ten people being a female. My theory is that most women have the good sense not to take the train that early in the morning, and that those of us who are standing there, freezing our asses in the station, are the stupid ones. The men? Well, they're almost always clueless about any situation, so why should commuting be any different?
For reals though, I've seen some crazy stuff, especially when I take my 7.00am Saturday train. This is usually filled with three types of people: workers (on a Saturday!), mothers taking their kids somewhere and/or travellers, and drunks. The last category is definetly the most noticeable, as these people have usually been out partying all night and are catching an early suburban train to go home. For them, 7.00 am is still night.
This weekend, for example, I had a drunk man about my age walk by me as I was blowing on my hands in the way people do when they are cold.
"Are you cold, Mademoiselle?" he asked, rather kindly, I thought.
"Um... yeah," I answered, I'm not sure why. Maybe because I was cold, even though the golden rule in these situations is to just not respond.
"Would you like me to make you hot?" he asked.
Hm. Unfortunately, my knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of comments is always to laugh, despite the fact that I sort of think that kind of behaviour is technically "unacceptable." I still find it funny sometimes, especially when I'm on my way to work.
Last week, I saw a guy who was so drunk he kept trying to correct his posture. He would sorta sit to the right, and then just start bending, and bending, and bending, and eventually he would be almost horizontal on the three chairs around him. When he realized the error, he sat up immediately and overcorrected to the left, almost falling off his chair entirely. He got so far to the left that his knees actually touched the ground and he saved himself from falling by supporting himself with his hand and pushing himself back onto the seat.
And then, finally, I saw a drunk guy falling asleep in a chair with a jacket over his head. Another drunk guy came up to him and started eyeing him very carefully. I didn't know why he was doing this, but eventually the second drunk guy started sort of circling around the sleeping drunk one like a vulture. It dawned on me that he was about to rob him when he started searching the guy's pockets. I didn't know how to handle that situation, so I did the responsible thing and got up, walked away, and pretended I hadn't seen anything.
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