I lived in a village in France in the spring of 2006. The name of my local grocery store was Attac, which, in retrospect, was a bit of a red flag. If you shop at a store called Bully, you shouldn’t be surprised when someone stuffs you in a locker.
The day I arrived in Thomery, I drove to Attac to stock up on essentials and got yelled at by three different people. I was pushing the cart too fast, I should have known to bring my own bags, and I needed to understand things more quickly.
I had been living in France for less than 24 hours and already I had encountered some of its more impassioned citizens.
Other countries take a bit longer to pull down their pouch and show off their joey.
I’d say Australia, or at least Perth, is a very peaceful place. Sure, the spiders and snakes can kill you. But as far as humans go, everyone has been very kind. I chalk it up to the sunshine and good coffee.
But two weeks ago, an old man at Jualbup Lake Park stole my brand new Camelbak water bottle and suddenly you better run, you better take cover.
Who steals a water bottle – from a gazebo, mind you – with “Bek” written on it in Sharpie? I’ll tell you who. An old man with a fedora and a walker in an otherwise deserted park. (Here I am tempted to make a “once a convict, always a convict” joke but I haven’t known my new friends long enough to gauge whether or not this would be appreciated. Non-native Australians can be sensitive about their origins. So I will put parentheses around this point in hopes they skip it.)
My day in the park with Moondyne Joe launched a litany of eccentric characters. A lady with large clip-on earrings and a pink scarf cornered me at the butcher to challenge my order of ground beef and lecture me on the rules of homemade hamburger patties. I walked to the post office and passed a man on the sidewalk who looked me straight in the eye and said, “you’re running the wrong way.” And finally, after six months of living here, I saw someone texting and driving.
It’s like San Francisco knows how much I miss her, and is speaking to me the best way she knows how. Message received. Perth may have the best beaches and coffee, but no one does crazy better than my hometown.
