Grève

n. – strike
Striking is a way of life in France. Today someone was striking about something they were unhappy about and through striking, they can in turn make everyone else unhappy as well. There were many of us unhappy people on the metro this morning.

Usually I take the car with my husband to work, but since he had a meeting, I was on my own. Well, not really if you consider the hundreds of people I was squished against on the train. The first one was too crowded to even get on, but since I was already running late, I couldn’t let the second one go by.

I don’t think I’ve ever even been as close to my husband as I was to the strangers surrounding me. I had to laugh at the ones trying to hold on to something. There was no need since there was no way to fall down. It’s as if we were one collective mass of heat and sweat. I was sweating from places I didn’t know you could sweat from. Well, make that glow, my mother always said “horses sweat, men perspire, women glow.” I was glowing like a nuclear reactor.

I know to a metro/subway veteran my story is probably not that shocking. I know people in Tokyo are actually pushed into trains with spatulas until they're ready to burst. But I don’t want to take the metro in Tokyo. I don’t want to take the metro anywhere ever again after this morning. And if the strike is designed to make you feel empathy for the strikers, it doesn’t. It only makes me hate them, whoever they are. What’s ironic to me is that today is the day people celebrate Fête des Voisins (party for the neighbours) as a way to meet one another. So I guess I celebrated my Fête des Voisins on the train thanks to the grève.