The Mystery of French Women

It’s highly likely that I will have many installments on the subject of French women. Like French school children, French woman have a particular reputation across the ocean in America. They are known for their tasteful sense of style, and also for their icy behavior, right? I have always hoped that the iciness is but a stereotype, or that it thaws in time, once you get to know one of these elusive characters. This is a hope that I will not give up on easily. I want to understand French women – befriend them even! Even after encountering the Mushroom Woman.

Yesterday I was sitting in Flunch, as I am wont to do these days. It was earlier than usual, and there was only a quiet late afternoon smattering of coffee drinkers. There was one person near me, a man reading a stack of newspapers. I saw one headline that undoubtedly introduced a heady article about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Across the room, a middle aged woman with died blond curly hair was speaking loudly at a table to a young Flunch employee on break (yes I know them all). The blond woman eventually came over to the man near me and made loud small talk with him. She was wearing off white on both the top and the bottom. Style, eh? Her off white jeans were a bit tight and I couldn’t help but notice her pronounced underwear line. An image of her standing in her bedroom in her underwear, trying to pick out a pair of pants flashed through my mind. Whitney, why on earth would you go there? Keep your mind to yourself!

The man asked her how she was. This was all she needed to launch. She heaved a sigh and began her tale of woe. She was on her way somewhere distant, a name I didn’t catch. Her mother was ill in the hospital, poisoned by a mushroom. I couldn’t help but look up. She and I made eye contact. Ah Maman! The poor woman had been eating mushrooms. Normal old mushrooms. But she had gotten a bad one. Just one of the lot had been bad. You just can’t trust a mushroom! The same mushrooms can be edible or poisonous, it depends on the surroundings, she explained. She started talking about color variation and soil and air quality and farms and so on and so on. Then she described her mother’s blood, her kidneys, and her liver. All poisoned. The man nodded. “Des champignons sont très dangereux.” He said.

I don’t think I was smiling. I think I was controlling myself quite successfully.

“People don’t understand the dangers anymore.” Said the blond. “No one learns about plants. No one understands the dangers of mushrooms. You know, it’s all the internet and the kids these days. All they do is click click click away on their laptops.” Yes, she said laptops. I looked up again. Was there any possible connection to her mother’s mushroom plight and kids using the internet? Or was she directly challenging me, sitting there so near her on my laptop clicking away? She continued, “All they know is the computer. And video games. Now now now! They don’t learn about farms or dangerous plants.”

I kid you not. This is really what she said. She didn’t look at me again, but I couldn’t help but stare at her in amazement. What is my fault that her elderly mother had fallen ill at the hands of a poisonous mushroom? In the off chance that she believed what she was saying, or even realized what she was saying, her tone was hostile and accusatory. I leaned back and watched her. I looked at the man to see if he was embarrassed at her open hostility towards the nearby internet using, laptop toting youngster. He was either oblivious or totally un-phased.

So I ask, am I too sensitive? Or do the social morays that exist in my world have no part in French culture? Or are French women truly the frosty queens that the stereotypes would have us believe? Maybe they just hate the internet and the globalism that it represents. Maybe that’s why it’s so damn hard to get the internet here, and why I still have to go to Flunch everyday.