It’s the holiday season and the anniversary of attacks here in Europe. Police are all over the place, and paramilitary soldiers are patrolling the sidewalks and busy areas. Most of the year, they are relaxed and even chat, but now, both the police and the soldiers are very alert. They are scanning everything and everyone.
I’m on holiday, and I’m not travelling. I have no family, and having been a contract worker postdoccing through rotten little two or three year appointments in different cities since the time I graduated, I haven’t kept up with many friends in the US. So, I spend the holidays with new friends here.
Instead of going to my lab to grind away at repetitive experiments at the Sorbonne, I spent my day writing yesterday. I started my walk to a café, la Closerie des Lilas, to write. It is a pleasant place next to the end of les Jardins de Luxembourg. It has a terrace looking across a town square, and next to the terrace is a massive bronze statue of General ?? on horseback. Halfway there, I stopped at a bakery to get a croissant. It was lunchtime, and I had avoided several other bakeries on account of 30 plus person long lines. It’s the holidays, most places are closed, and lines are long at what remains open.
There was only one person in this bakery, and they had what I wanted in plain site on a shelf. The person in front of me was an old lady. That’s fine. Double the time for her to do anything, and the wait is reasonable. She fishes a list out of her purse. She is so old, tiny, and decrepit, she probably won’t buy much. She mumbled something to the baker. The baker did not understand and asked her to repeat it. The old lady was reading something off the top of the list. Aroudn one minute had already gone by. The list had 12 items, and she was failing at getting the first item. Finally, the baker understood. It was a loaf of bread. Item number one had been obtained.
She wheezed the name of the next item. She had to repeat it again and again, all the while waving the list. Five minutes have now gone by. I was wondering why she didn’t simply hand the list to the clerk. That’s what I would have done. She couldn’t speak clearly, and the clerk could not understand her. With practice, one usually gets better and faser and something. She was old enough to have bought bread at a bakery thousands of times before.
So she mumbles it yet again. She waves the list some more. Then the clerk asks her to point to it in the display case. Sooooo, she takes her Professional Helper’s arm, and she shuffles the 5 feet to it. It took her a full minute to scoot that far. It was cake so the clerk had to wrap it. Another couple of minutes of both our lives have now been lost, and she had ten more things to get. One would expect that at that age, one would not want to screw around with the precious few good years or months that remain.
By now, a line has formed, and the bakery is crowded. One might wonder why I didn’t offer to help her. I wanted to, but she had a Professional Helper at her side. This helper’s job seemed to be limited to holding each item as it was passed to her, and to taking her arm each and steadying her each time she had to shuffle the five feet across the store to point to something. She was well into her second childhood, and her helper was as useless as a small child. She went down the list like this. After 15 minutes she was down to number 6. Several people had already given up and left.
She didn't have her money ready, and I doubted that her helper would bother to help count it for her. I pictured the scene she would make fishing out a tiny pouch of change in her big purse, squinting at the coins to read their value, counting the exact change,
Usually, I don’t even bother trying to buy anything when somebody like that is in front of me. I had brought something good to read, and I really thought I could wait it out. I didn’t get angry until about fifteen minutes in. I finally swore, a little louder than I meant, and left.
I’m on holiday, and I’m not travelling. I have no family, and having been a contract worker postdoccing through rotten little two or three year appointments in different cities since the time I graduated, I haven’t kept up with many friends in the US. So, I spend the holidays with new friends here.
Instead of going to my lab to grind away at repetitive experiments at the Sorbonne, I spent my day writing yesterday. I started my walk to a café, la Closerie des Lilas, to write. It is a pleasant place next to the end of les Jardins de Luxembourg. It has a terrace looking across a town square, and next to the terrace is a massive bronze statue of General ?? on horseback. Halfway there, I stopped at a bakery to get a croissant. It was lunchtime, and I had avoided several other bakeries on account of 30 plus person long lines. It’s the holidays, most places are closed, and lines are long at what remains open.
There was only one person in this bakery, and they had what I wanted in plain site on a shelf. The person in front of me was an old lady. That’s fine. Double the time for her to do anything, and the wait is reasonable. She fishes a list out of her purse. She is so old, tiny, and decrepit, she probably won’t buy much. She mumbled something to the baker. The baker did not understand and asked her to repeat it. The old lady was reading something off the top of the list. Aroudn one minute had already gone by. The list had 12 items, and she was failing at getting the first item. Finally, the baker understood. It was a loaf of bread. Item number one had been obtained.
She wheezed the name of the next item. She had to repeat it again and again, all the while waving the list. Five minutes have now gone by. I was wondering why she didn’t simply hand the list to the clerk. That’s what I would have done. She couldn’t speak clearly, and the clerk could not understand her. With practice, one usually gets better and faser and something. She was old enough to have bought bread at a bakery thousands of times before.
So she mumbles it yet again. She waves the list some more. Then the clerk asks her to point to it in the display case. Sooooo, she takes her Professional Helper’s arm, and she shuffles the 5 feet to it. It took her a full minute to scoot that far. It was cake so the clerk had to wrap it. Another couple of minutes of both our lives have now been lost, and she had ten more things to get. One would expect that at that age, one would not want to screw around with the precious few good years or months that remain.
By now, a line has formed, and the bakery is crowded. One might wonder why I didn’t offer to help her. I wanted to, but she had a Professional Helper at her side. This helper’s job seemed to be limited to holding each item as it was passed to her, and to taking her arm each and steadying her each time she had to shuffle the five feet across the store to point to something. She was well into her second childhood, and her helper was as useless as a small child. She went down the list like this. After 15 minutes she was down to number 6. Several people had already given up and left.
She didn't have her money ready, and I doubted that her helper would bother to help count it for her. I pictured the scene she would make fishing out a tiny pouch of change in her big purse, squinting at the coins to read their value, counting the exact change,
Usually, I don’t even bother trying to buy anything when somebody like that is in front of me. I had brought something good to read, and I really thought I could wait it out. I didn’t get angry until about fifteen minutes in. I finally swore, a little louder than I meant, and left.