pharmacy or the sorbonne?

I went by the pharmacy to pick up a couple of prescriptions I had dropped off Saturday and when I entered, the (female) pharmacist was speaking with a customer about how women had become like men and years ago something like this never would have happened and today people have no souls. I patiently waited my turn and gave her my slip for the prescriptions. She continued babbling about people buying guns (or something along these lines, I was only half-listening), while I tried a couple of times to tell her that I needed to purchase an additional item. I kept thinking “Just shut up, get my stuff and tell me how much I owe already.”

She lowered her voice even though there was no one else around, other than the two (men) employees and told me that a woman motorcyclist had run over a pedestrian just in front of the pharmacy and kept driving. I responded with what I thought was an appropriate eyebrow raise and said “ah, bon?”. The woman looked at me while one of the other employees commandeered the computer for something. I could tell that she was waiting for my outrage to come pouring out at the unbelievable idea that a woman, a WOMAN (insert gasp) could do something so heartless.

Getting into a long French philosophical conversation about how the genders were no longer distinguishable according to behavior, was really not high on my things-I-must-do list. As I stood there I had a couple of thoughts running through my head 1) how do I get out of this quickly without seeming rude and 2) this is a large city, why is a hit and run such a catastrophe, just because it was a woman driving. Shouldn’t the anger be because any human would just drive off?

Part of me considered using the “I’m foreign” route to try to escape but I wasn’t really sure how to insert that without coming off as an insensitive idiot since obviously Ms. Pharmacist believed that anyone and everyone should be upset at this story. So I just stood there. I guess she got the idea that I didn’t want to talk and rang up my order. I think next time I might go to the other pharmacy down the street. They aren’t as friendly but I can get out much faster without trying to figure out some culturally correct conversation escape…