A Shift in the Force

When I first moved here, I was awash in a rainstorm of illogic. The catch-22 of needing a lease to open a bank account but also not being able to sign a lease without one was just mind-boggling. Only being able to complete certain banking transactions with my particular account manager never failed to amaze. People’s tendency to act impatiently (cutting lines, aggressively hopping onto train cars) was in sharp contrast to their tendency to be completely dazed and oblivious (stopping short right in front of you on the street and not considerately moving out of the way…and then getting mad if you at all bumped into them). None of it made any sense! At the time, when I expressed my confusion and frustration, my American friend who’d been living in Paris for over six years said, “See, that’s your mistake: looking for logic where there isn’t any!”

During the months that followed, I experienced more than my fair share of the small paradoxes of French life. Over time, my friend’s advice started to sink in. And lately, I seem to be crossing a threshold. The illogical things that used to completely blow my mind have by now become so commonplace that they’re expected rather than a cause for surprise.

Take yesterday, for example. I went to deposit some cash at the bank and was told that that particular type of transaction would no longer be possible with a teller. Apparently after an inexplicable “transition period,” customers have to stop depositing with tellers and use the ATMs. No matter that I had done it a few weeks before and every month since August. You may recall how much my bank is despised in my household (see: here, here, and also here). This would have put me over the edge even a season ago. However, I have no idea what the “transition period” means, how long it is, or whom it applies to, because I didn’t even think to ask. I just took the absurdity of the situation in stride, shrugged my shoulders, and thought, It figures. Next.

Then there was my reaction to yesterday’s impromptu RER strike. Usually transportation strikes must be preceded by two weeks’ advance notice, but the workers took matters into their own hands in protest of one of their own getting attacked. Monday night, an off-duty conductor was on his way to work in the RER station when some young hooligans asked him for a cigarette. When he said he didn’t have any, they harassed him to the point of physically aggressing him. The poor man wound up in the hospital. That’s just awful.

But what did the RER Line A workers do? They went on strike, inconveniencing a whole lot of people (the line has the highest passenger volume in all of Paris and its suburbs). Public transport commute times were quadrupled in length; the news reported a total of 400 km of traffic trying to get into Paris. Is the state, or the community for that matter, responsible for the actions of a few young asshats?

Months ago, this kind of thing would have send me onto a sarcastic, seething downward spiral about the irrationality and misplaced actions and blah blah blah. But no, I shrugged and like every single French person does in the face of ludicrousness, said apathetically, “C’est normal. C’est la France.”

Post-Script: I just got home from having drinks and heard yet another tale that got barely a raised eyebrow out of me. An acquaintance had dinner at a Parisian restaurant and she wanted to have two starters instead of a starter and a main dish. The restaurant refused her request. Of course, service is notoriously brusque here, but that just takes the cake. Me, I just smirked and muttered, "Typical, typical..." I think this new phase of assimilation is making me as cynical as the French.