Pardon
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| So many people...Such narrow sidewalks... |
"Pardon."
"Pardon."
"PARDON."
Four times, and the girl on the sidewalk still hadn't moved. She hadn't even looked up from her phone to acknowledge my presence, and my repeated and increasingly loud pleas did nothing to break her oblivion, nor did the sight of my bulging grocery caddy teetering on the curb to edge around her as she stood in the middle of the sidewalk make her scoot even an inch to one side to let me pass. She didn't even flinch.
Now, I am not a small person. At 5-foot-9 and significantly more solid than most of these rail-thin French people—seriously, where do all those baguettes go?—I'm not exactly easy to ignore. But I find that my personal space is constantly being violated by pedestrians of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds here in Paris. I might as well be wearing a sign that says, "Please, aggressively walk toward me so fast that I have no recourse but to dive out of your way and hope that my shoulder doesn't hit yours when you finally breeze past me."
I don't think that would all fit on one sign.
Personal space has been an interesting social cue in the big cities I've lived in. Being from California, there's an innate courtesy that imbues our social interactions with a sense of, "You're a human, I'm a human." (Which is not to say there aren't rude Californians, but I'm generalizing in our favor.) When I moved to the metropolis of New York City, where the sidewalks teem with humanity at all hours of the day, it made sense that there would be a lot of jostling and space-sharing and accidental toe stomping. Same with Paris. What's different is the attitude with which disparate cultures share such limited space.
In New York, the number of people who walked straight out of a shop and onto the sidewalk without looking, thereby making it necessary for the pedestrian already on the sidewalk to stop short or dive around them lest a collision occur was mind-boggling. And frustrating, especially for someone—a Californian someone—who spends a lot of brain energy trying to figure out how not to be in the way. Equally egregious were the number of tourists who would stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk to aim a cell phone or camera at a particularly "New York-y" sight, oblivious to the line of people behind them who just had to alter their flight paths so suddenly they nearly spilled all 17 of their Starbucks. But almost always there was a chirped, "Sorry!" or "'Scuse me!" or a quick smile to dispel the tension even after someone had nearly lost an eye to an arrant umbrella spoke.
In Paris, the same thing happens, but there's an added nonchalant aggression that I find fascinating—and frightening. Because Paris is an equally busy metropolis with even narrower streets (tiny smart cars aren't a fad, they're a necessity), body overlap is inevitable. But instead of making room for each other with a nod of the head or the flash of a smile as you pass close enough that you can smell the other person's deodorant (if they're wearing it, of course—more on that in a previous post), there's a competitive glint that overtakes the eyes, a setting of the jaw, a hunch of the shoulders that says, "This sidewalk ain't big enough for the both of us." (I'm sure it sounds better in French.)
And you know what? It isn't. It damn well isn't. But it's especially tight when you (I'm looking at you, hipster couple latched at the waist) don't fall into a single-file line to allow the other—equally harried, equally there—human being coming toward you to pass without crashing into the side of a building or falling into the gutter. I've lost count the number of times that Joshua and I have been walking side by side, having a conversation, and when we spot someone approaching us on the sidewalk up ahead, we instinctively stop talking and one or the other falls behind to allow our fellow pedestrian passage. We do not continue walking as though the other person coming toward us will suddenly vanish into thin air, jump into the street or, better yet, parcour up the building to allow us to continue on our merry way.
We seem to be the only people in this city who think that way.
I've accidentally "held hands" with several people by this point (people who try and pass from behind, which is a particularly irritating study in how to make your fellow primates freak out and think they're being attacked), I've had my wrist cracked by swinging fists, taken several handbags to the gut, nearly chest-bumped a good number of people (or, again considering my height, shoulder-checked them in the face) and encountered countless other forms of physical violation because no one knows how to freakin' share. (Seriously, French preschools, lesson number one. What have you been doing instead? Teaching three-year-olds how to spot the best foie gras?)
But the most remarkable part of all of these encounters is the number of times I don't get hit. In about 85% of the cases (an entirely un-scientific estimate), I see the impending crash, hold my breath...and nothing. I've even tested various attitudes—smiling, not smiling, bowing my head, clenching my jaw—and none of them seem to matter. A person approaches, he/she doesn't move one iota, I hold my ground and continue to walk toward them and at the last possible second a shoulder is moved, a bag is tugged, and we pass without incident.
When I finally start breathing again, I start to wonder: why is it that people here are so reluctant to acknowledge their fellow human being? Would a nod of the head and a slight smile to say, "Hey, I see you, we want the same smidgeon of sidewalk, let's share" really ruin the I'm-so-Parisian-I-don't-care-if-I-get-my-ankle-broken-by-a-fellow-citizen-because-I-refuse-to-look-them-in-the-eye attitude they seem to have so carefully adopted? Would it really muss their perfectly coiffed-not-coiffed hair or smudge their lipstick or hurt their cigarette-drenched soul to show a glimmer of humanity at a moment when you're all but certain to come into contact with a fellow earthling? I have to believe that the answer is no.
Maybe they're all aliens.
Maybe I just miss California.
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