04 December, 2007

sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me

i don't know if it's because the french are stereotypically rude or it's just big city folk in general, but lots people here aren't nice to me. they aren't cruel or abusive or anything...they just don't reach out to help strangers or do random acts of kindness. i've never had more people think i'm a complete tard.

they're usually right. i don't know how to express myself well in this language, so i usually come out looking like a moron. i also didn't know how to handle myself in a big city at first, so i stumbled on a lot of things (literally and figuratively).

having so many people look at me funny and --to put it nicely-- be short with me, i've become hardened to this kind of rudeness. when someone isn't nice to me at the cash register, i brush it off. if someone doesn't smile back, it's no big deal. when i was calling to apartments in iv earlier, some of the people sort of treated me like i didn't know what i was talking about. instead of getting all worked up about it, i found myself unaffected by their non-niceness.

this is a change in myself that i'm glad to see :-)

1 comment:

Batalla said...

It's definitely not limited to France. I've noticed people in San Francisco are nice to a stranger like myself when I'm in their big city. But back in my native Los Angeles, it's like every person for themselves. I attribute that to the vanity of the movie industry and the race tensions among the population.