Small scene of ordinary life in a black and white film. This week, in the afternoon, at a grocery store near my house, I saw a woman being arrested for shoplifting. The lady was about to leave the store when a young man (the mirrored wardrobe type who gave off no heat) asked her to empty her canvas bag. The lady started to smile nervously, pretending to be amazed (the whole thing was happening in full view of everyone, at rush hour and in the crowd – even if it was only me, with my lynx eye and my sense of drama, which seemed to see and hear everything).
After long seconds of the man blocking her, the lady finally complied and began to take out the items one by one: packages of boneless chicken, a loaf of bread, cans of food, a bag of rice, some vegetables. , a liter of soft drink… Then, at one point, she was shaking so much that she couldn’t get anything out (at that precise moment, I admit, I was afraid to witness a heart attack and a live death!).
Faced with his tremors, which resembled convulsions, the young man – stoic and straight as a soldier – ended up bending over to finish the work and take out the last provisions. Then, he turned the bag inside out to ensure that there was nothing left in it while another clerk, also proudly displaying the store’s badge, came to surround the “offender”. All this time, the lady “maintained” a broad smile which poorly hid her little end of the world, and it was there, I think, that my heart gave way…
I, who usually hate people who steal and run up my bill (while I’m the type to go back to a store to return the extra $10 that a clerk gave me by mistake!), I I suddenly had the impression of entering the reverse side of a vast setting. During this bad quarter of an hour – the antipodes of a 15 minutes of fame – which must have seemed interminable, I had the impression of reading the complete novel of this woman’s life.
This woman who “looked like November in the rain”, as in Clémence’s song, had both arms in the wringer and seemed to be undergoing the greatest humiliation of her life in addition to seeing, who knows, her “command” of the week — and perhaps even that of her husband and her offspring — return to the shelves of a grocery store that she will never dare to visit again. And all this in front of magazines that were crying over the fate of Céline, shunned by Taylor Swift in a gala where one-day dresses compete with the shiny limousines that transport them, while a welfare check, closer to us , can no longer even cover the rent of accommodation (if one has one), but easily shames those who resort to it.
Leaving the store, I continued to watch the scene through the huge window, then I saw the two men take the lady towards an office at the back… And that’s where my little inner film began. ‘stopped. I have no idea if this lady experienced the drama that I have just projected and I am absolutely not trying to apologize for an act which otherwise remains punishable and reprehensible.
I simply wanted to highlight this little piece of life to illustrate, if necessary, how violent our societies of high contrasts – against a backdrop of Grammys and wars – are for those who fight every day for their livelihood. And offer this little letter to a woman – on whom opprobrium has every chance of falling – who has undoubtedly never been, as in the song Farm life“a subject for song”.