About three weeks in, I came to that point when every budding adult realizes it’s time to suck it up and do laundry: I ran out of underwear.
After ten minutes inside the French laundromat, I decided it was the perfect analogy to describe my experiences with the Cannes Film Festival.
First, it wasn’t at all like I expected. The laundromat was this small, damp space in which minimal instructions were provided, other than a sign in French that I struggled to understand, even after eight years of studying the language in school. The Festival had also offered me little explanation as to how I should get the most out of my time there. Although Cannes had been hospitable for the most part, I often found myself trapped in sweaty crowds or theaters I didn’t realize would be so tiny. There was a confusing claustrophobia to watching movies and washing clothes.
There was also an overwhelming amount of—some often not so desirable—options. Which out of these dozen or more washing machines should I pick to put my clothes in? Which movies out of this extensive list should I decide to spend my time seeing? If I chose the wrong ones, I could feel I’d missed out on something better. Or even worse, I could ruin my clothes.
Also like Cannes and the Festival, the laundromat did an excellent job of sucking up all of the cash I’d brought with me. Never did I expect one tiny load of laundry to cost me the equivalent of $6. Nor did I expect a notebook the size of the train guide to cost me 12 Euros in the official boutique.
I sat in the green hard-plastic chair and worked on my review due later that evening, but I felt utterly distracted by my frustrations. As one of those people who always gets their hopes up, I was disappointed the laundromat couldn’t offer me more in the realm of comfort, user-friendliness and affordability. It was the same story of my Festival woes, retold in the form of washing machine doors that wouldn’t shut, driers that only ran for five minutes at a time and detergent that was, oddly enough, dispensed into a rusty tin can that once held peaches.
To add to my distractions, in walked a family of five. A father, a mother and three girls, all under the age of six. On second glance, there were only two little girls. The youngest child, who wore a pink shirt but no pants or diaper, was actually clearly a boy.
The family wasn’t necessarily loud, but they were distracting all the same. Just like during the Festival, another unexpected spectacle was before me, and I tried my best to ignore the family as I had the couple on stilts handing out newspapers by the Palais.
I watched the mom stuff what looked like an impossible amount of dirty clothes, towels and blankets into one of the smallest, cheapest machines. Then, they all retreated to a large blue van parked across the street where I assumed they would wait until their laundry was finished. Finally at peace, I dug back into my review.
Then, the father came back and directed his attention at me. Like the buyers who walked in and out of films in the middle of their expositions, he was deterring my concentration. Knowing it would be rude to simply ignore him, I reluctantly pulled my eyes away from my computer screen to hear what he had to say.
In broken French, he tried to apologize for the fact that his son was half-naked and explained that his only pair of pants were currently being washed. In broken French, I told him it was okay. When he realized by my accent that I wasn’t a native, he asked me where I was from.
« Les Étâts Unis, » I told him. His face lit up as he pointed to his shirt, which said “Los Angeles.” All of a sudden he seemed more charming, and I closed my Macbook, so I could better listen. Through a series of half-finished French phrases and pantomimes, he told me his story. To the best of my knowledge, this is what he said:
Romania isn’t an easy place to live. Their house was destroyed, for what reason I’m not quite sure, since I couldn’t decide if his arm motions were to imitate a machine gun being fired or a bulldozer being operated. For some time, they had been traveling the continent as refugees, the five of them all living in what no longer looked to me like a “large” van.
As I adapted to the awkwardness of our language barrier, I felt more and more that this man was deserving of my attention, and I listened to him as intently as I could.
I’d never be able to begin to pronounce his name or the names of his wife, eldest daughter and diaperless son. But his middle child, his Jasmine, she was his favorite to talk about. Somehow she had been born with blue eyes, although the rest of the family had brown.
His son, he told me, was one year old. It was then that I realized how dire their situation truly was.
The boy was much too skinny for a one-year-old. His legs and arms lacked the pudgy attributes of a typical toddler. His cheeks, too. How stupid of me to assume that his two girls, with their pot bellies sticking out from their thin shirts, were well-fed. They showed all the signs of malnourished children—dark circles, bony elbows and water-bloated bellies.
This man hadn’t solicited me. He’d simply requested my ears. But in doing so, he’d made me feel disgustingly pompous for sitting there with my laptop and judging him prematurely.
I gave him five Euros.
When his family rejoined him from the van, he told them to thank me because I was the reason they would eat tonight.
I should have given him more money.
As I watched this family interact together—the girls screaming with delight while they played tag; the baby boy bursting into giggles as his father bounced him on one knee; the mother taking it all in with a look of maternal satisfaction—it hit me.
This laundromat wasn’t a symbolic equivalent to my Cannes Film Festival grievances. It was a metaphor for the petty nature of my First World problems.
The members of this family, who seemed genuinely happy despite having no home, substantial food supply or effective means of communication with those around them, were my wake up call from my self-indulgent irritations.
Feeling overwhelmed by crowds, confusing signage and high-priced souvenirs… those weren’t hardships. Being a privileged member of the Marché badge holders was not a burden. I knew nothing of homesickness or culture shock. I had been treating my study abroad experience the way an ungrateful teen treats their parents—except I didn’t even have the excuse of being in the throes of puberty.
I washed much more than my dirty clothes that night. I cleansed my mind of my frivolous frustrations. My new perspective left me finally able to appreciate this opportunity to the fullest—something I’m ashamed to admit I needed prompting to do.
