In and out of love....

Little shout out to any Bon Jovi fans/New Jersey natives with the title there.

I fell in and out of love at the laundry mat today. There was and adorable old French woman sitting in there doing her laundry when I walked in. She was doing a ton of laundry and had about three machines occupied. We said our "bonjour Madame" because of course, even though we're total strangers, in France you always have to saluer. I was already enamored because she was cute and little and old, but fell even more deeply in love when I saw her.... get ready for it.... eat her lunch out of a tupperware container!!! Yes, I saw a person, in France, doing laundry during the two hour lunch break and bringing a sad little tupperware lunch to go with them. I was convinced that she had some kind of connection to America. I had to stop myself from looking over at her and grinning.

Sadly our love affair came to an end when her laundry was done and she went to use the dryers. She had just finished putting one of her loads in a dryer when another woman came in with her laundry to dry (it's very common in France to only own a washer; lots of people line dry or they take their stuff to the laundrymat) and occupied another dryer, leaving two open dryers. Little old lady goes and grabs her re-useable Monoprix bag and just puts it in the third dryer, to save it I guess. Well, there were like three other washers besides mine being used, I assumed she had a bunch more stuff to put in there. This leaves one dryer available. My stuff finishes so I stick it in the dryer. By this time another man had walked in. The other washers finish, and they make this terrible beeping noise until you open them, so the man walks over and opens his washers but stays in the laundrymat, clearly indicating that he's waiting for a dryer. Little old lady's last laundry machine finishes. She proceedes to take out half of the stuff that's in the washer and then put two towels in the dryer that she had been saving. Two towels. Did I mention that these dryers are enormous, like the size of three normal dryers? And that she could have just put it in the other one she was already using? And then her other dryer finishes. She takes out half the stuff in there, leaves the rest and turns the dryer back on! Meanwhile this poor man is sitting there very patiently. I felt really bad for him. If it were me I would have been very annoyed.

And so my love affair came to an end. Someone who was that inconsiderate of another person could only be French. Not a drop of American in her.