Addendum.

OH MY GOD I WANNA CRY.

As soon as I finished this post there sat a girl, who looks like she's barely out of the lycee (which is quite young, considering my own "looks way younger than she is" complex and the fact that she is ethnic French and White People Age Differently Than Asians and all that), in front of me. She is wearing a neon t-shirt and jeans, and on the seat next to her is -

A taupe pebble leather Hermes Birkin bag.

HERMES. BIRKIN.

Let me repeat that the girl barely looks lycee age. I don't even know if she goes to this school. And she is schlepping around a Birkin. The best I've got is my mother's beat-up Louis Vuitton Speedy - something so commonplace and counterfeited as to become borderline vulgar - that is as old as me (and which I left behind in America because I accidentally broke the handles when I was fifteen and we still haven't fixed it) and the even more beat-up Prada that my grandma got from a Goodwill for two dollars (which is awesome in itself, and is useful enough for me to bring to Paris, but seeing as my Gran doesn't know Prada from Primark that isn't saying much).

I can't even afford the 86-euro Benetton version of the Birkin.

Life is so unfair.