The Reluctant Parisienne Survives Strikes, Wrath of Penguins

Mindy Jones is a Seattleite living in Paris for two years with her husband and two kids. Her daily life does not include romantic walks along the Seine, champagne picnics on the Pont des Arts, or five-star gourmet dinners. For a realistic take on life in a fantasy place, visit her blog, An American Mom in Paris.

France is mad as hell and blah blah blah something about not putting up with this crap anymore. The country known for its strike culture is knocking itself out with daily manifestations and ongoing disruptions in metro/bus/plane/boat/hot-air-balloon/bobsled service. Walking service will be reduced next; two out of three people will have to slither around on their bellies.

The main issue sparking the unrest is the upping of the retirement age from 60 to 62. It's pissed off a whole bunch of people (who may or may not understand math) and they are expressing their discontent by refusing to do many things. There are gas shortages because no one's working the refineries and rumored food shortages in the near future.

Just work your extra two years, dammit, French people. I need my corn flakes.

Strikes are a regular part of life here and we've gotten used to disrupted transportation service and canceled school days. Last year, however, going on strike surfaced in the most unlikely of places.

We'd been in Paris about six months when we went to our son's end-of-year preschool play. For the record, watching three-year-olds mill around onstage is as awkwardly entertaining here as it is anywhere. The confused wandering, the blank stares, the teachers whispering loudly and gesturing madly from the wings--the cluelessness of the three-year old is the same despite all our cultural differences.

The theme of the show was "The Sea." Our son was dressed as a windmill and helped demonstrate why the ocean is salty. I think it was something about a magic, salty windmill. Those precocious kids were speaking French so the subtleties, or even the generalities, of the tale were lost on me.

The show continued with the older kids pleading for environmental awareness. Great idea, but, man, do those kids know how to kill a festive mood. First up were a group of penguins whom I thought were chatting happily until I realized they were saying their families were dead because of pollution. All their friends were dead, too. What a bunch of downer penguins.

As French penguins do, they then went on strike, holding signs in their flipperish hands and chanting things like, "Down with humans! Penguins against the humans!" I felt conflicted who to cheer for as I believe I'm a human and not a penguin, but humans seem like real polluting jerks.

Then came the sea urchins discussing how everyone they loved was dead. And the coral, they had also lost all those near and dear to them. Same with the dolphins, then the whales. At this point, a fellow American mama sitting behind us leaned forward and whispered, "Jesus, this is worse than Hamlet."

One by one, all the depressed creatures of the sea agreed on a solution. No, they didn't form committees and go pick up garbage on beaches; they organized and the whole ocean went on strike. The grand finale involved more sign waving, chanting and stomping of small feet sticking out from large sea creature costumes. I laughed so hard, silently and hiccupy, that tears streamed down my face. I like to think if anyone saw me, they just thought I was sad everything in the ocean was dead.

It did make me wonder: If the starfish and coral went on strike, how would we know? I hope someone's keeping an eye on things down there. I also hope someone's got some plans in case we are attacked by wrathful penguins staging manifestations.

Reduced metro service doesn't seem like such a big deal, come to think of it. Carry on, French people.