Ya Madame

The horror! The horror! (Image found on Tumblr)

I turned 26 this month. I am now solidly in "mid-20s" territory, toeing into the "late 20s," and I have a lot of feelings about it. Angst about growing old is a pretty universal sentiment, but I feel like there has been a conspiracy against me as of late to remind me that not only am I no longer a spritely teenager, I don't look like one either.

It happened one evening in June. As I was headed home, I had to pass through an alley in which a soldier and another man were standing. The soldier gestured to his friend to move out of the way and "let the mademoiselle go through." All well and good, until I got to his level, and heard him add: "or is it madame?"

For the first time in my life, I had been madame-d.

Surviving the Service: the first of what will undoubtedly become a series

The concept of a "service"

Beirut, for its apparent lack of public transportation, has a very practical means of moving about called the service—pronounced the French way, aka "serveece."

Basically, a service is just like a regular taxi, except it picks up and drops off multiple people along the way. Think bus, if a bus didn't have a predetermined route, and if by "bus" you meant a car built sometime back when the Soviet Union was still a thing and seat belts were an optional feature.