Mischief on the Metro

Today on my morning metro ride to work, I was terrorized by two 11-year-olds.

I was sitting reading my Lyon Plus, which had a rather boring article about the US ambassador's visit to Lyon to present a plaque or something, when all of a sudden I found a baseball cap on my head. I turned to see an 11-year-old French garcon looking at me in feigned astonishment and pointing to his friend, "C'etait lui!" It was him! Right. I give him back the cap.

Back to my article about the plaque, I realized that this could happen again, and if it did, I would play a trick on these boys. Sure enough, approximately 1.35 minutes later, the cap was back on my head, but this time I was quick. I grabbed the cap, walked out of the metro, whose doors were about to close, and smirked at the yells from the French boys behind me for their hat back. 'Well,' I thought, 'they are just kids. They're harmless. I'm not really gonna take their hat. Plus, this isn't my stop.' So, being the nice & friendly American that I am (or naive and blonde, as these French boys seemed to think), I gave the hat back to the boy who had run after me and sat myself at the other, far end of the car.

At the last stop, I got off and made my way to the exit. Of course, the boys walked directly by me, so I decided to give them a look of dissatisfaction, so they could know their wrongdoing (to touch a stranger on the metro is a major faux-pas). Crack! One of the boys sticks his leg out in front of mine, which hurts but doesn't cause me to trip, as was his intention. I was pissed.

"Excusez-moi! C'etait tres impoli, ca!" I sternly rebuked the he-children. Excuse-me, that was very RUDE! I was flabbergasted--as were they, apparently, as I left them staring in disbelief at the reality that this tall, long blonde-haired foreigner actually spoke French.

I walked away laughing to myself.