Cultural Narrative: Week Trois

After being in Paris for about three weeks I thought it would be a good time to do some laundry. Amelia and I were blessed with a wonderful apartment with probably one of the nicest view of the city, but only lacked a washer. So this past weekend Amelia and I decided to pay a visit to the local Laundromat, but what happened there isn’t what expected…

With garbage bags in hand we then set off down the street. When we arrived there was an older woman who was also using the facilities. I don’t think we prepared ourselves very well because the machine instructions looked very foreign. I thought that using the machines would be easy, like a universal sort of a thing. Well, go figure, I was wrong. “Parlez-vous anglais?” I asked the women, she replied “Oui, êtes-vous besoin d'aide?” She then explained to us in English how to use the machines, I felt kind of dumb at this point. But soon enough our dirty laundry was getting cleaned and Amelia and I headed back up to our apartment.

An hour had passed and we had already put our cloths into the dryer. Amelia and I then gathered our empty garbage bags and headed down to the Laundromat for our final lap. There were more people this time, so things were now crowed. As we each stood back to back folding our cloths I noticed a man walk in. He was dressed normally in a collared shirt and shorts, but didn’t have any garments with him, so I wondered what he could be doing here. He just stood in the doorway for a minute then went and stood an arms length, directly in front of Amelia. Because my back was turned I couldn’t exactly tell what he was doing, but I could still feel his presence. I wasn’t alarmed at this point because there were other people in room, but he then came around and stood right across from me and leaned up against the washer with his chin in his hand. I took one look at him and knew something wasn’t right and because he had sunglasses on I couldn’t tell exactly what he looking at. Amelia then nudged me and whispered, “He is making me uncomfortable, let’s get out of here.” We then gathered our things and walked out the door. I could sense something still wasn’t right as I looked over my shoulder and there in the street looking at us was the same man who was staring at us inside. “I think he is following us”, Amelia said. We instinctively didn’t want him to see where we were going, so we turned left inside of right and stood in a doorway. 5 minutes passed and Amelia checked to see if he was still standing there, he wasn’t so we ran back to our apartment. We weren’t sure if he was indeed following us, but we didn’t want to take any chances. Afterward we felt a bit freaked out, but both agreed that we made the right decisions.

I’m not going to lie; this experience was a little nerve racking. Reflecting back on it now I find it interesting how innately I knew that something wasn’t quite right as soon as that man walked into the Laundromat. Just goes to show you how well your basic instinct kicks in sometimes. I would say that this occurrence wasn’t traumatizing, just a reminder that we are living in a city and there are certainly creep’s and weirdo’s out there, even in Laundromats.