Open Letter to the woman who flicked her cigarette ashes on me at a bus stop in France. Twice.

I understand that smoking is to France kind of like what eating at McDonald’s is to America. Bad habit in the country, yes. Stereotypical behavior of its people, yes. Unbelievably common nationwide, yes. So it was no surprise to me that you were smoking at the bus stop the other day. What surprised me was the way you so inconsiderately let your cigarette ashes find their way onto my coat. My only coat. The first time I could, of course, let slide. You were standing next to me at such proximity and such an angle that, when the wind blew at just the speed and in just the direction that it happened to blow that day, your ash was clearly going to go nowhere but my coat. No big deal. It couldn’t have been helped. But I’m sure that you saw the way my eyes followed that ash, the way my left hand lifted to brush it from my right arm, and the way my eyes then looked up to meet yours. I know you saw it, because you looked away from me right away. And it was the type of look-away that means oh, my bad. I don’t care that you didn’t say you were sorry. You probably weren’t really sorry. But couldn’t you have just turned ever so slightly or switched smoking hands so that next time the wind blew your ash would have landed in the nearby fountain or in the street? No, I guess that would have been too difficult a task. But in all honesty, I’m not upset about that at all. I’m not upset that your ash landed a second time in the exact same spot on my coat. What really bugs me is the look you gave me. You know, the one you threw in my direction after I stood up – without saying anything, without even looking at you angrily as I so would have liked to do – and walked over to the next bench. You turned and tossed me such an annoyed glare that I had to ask myself if I had done something wrong by choosing to relocate to an ash-free, cigarette smell-free area. Well, dear woman who flicked her cigarette ash on me twice, please accept my sincerest apologies. I certainly didn’t mean to offend you. In hindsight, maybe you would have felt better about the whole situation had I rested there at that bus stop, your personal ashtray. And I’m most sorry that I can’t ever express this to you. Seeing as how a) I don’t usually understand the phenomenon in my mother tongue and b) I’m not yet fluent in yours, I truly doubt that I will be mastering sarcasm in this country anytime soon.