incident on the subway
I am fortunate enough to arrive at the platform a minute before the train comes. While I'm sitting on the subway happily listening to my iPod, I overhear one of those loud ranters who bitterly rail against a fellow passenger for the 15-20 minute duration of the subway ride.
I have always supposed that this kind of prolonged beleaguerment was not solely for the benefit of the transgressor, who must be taught the error of his/her ways, but rather for the entire train who should be made aware of the presence of this travesty of a human being.
Sometimes this is justified, such as when a hand belonging to a male is mysteriously found on a female's posterior, and she inquires loudly, "To whom does this hand belong?". Other times it seems excessive and unnecessary such as when a rider decides that another rider has disrespected him/her by bumping, crowding, looking at him/her funny or just existing in an irritating fashion.
I personally do not have the chutzpah or the stamina to publicly harangue someone for 20 minutes. If I need to convey something to a fellow rider, I generally inform just the rider and leave the gross displays to the pros.
However, on this occasion, the offense seemed to be that someone had run over a child, run right over a defenseless child just to get a seat. It's nice to get a seat and all but some people have no manners and no respect and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
I'm hearing this over the Arctic Monkeys and thinking, wow, that girl is pretty pissed at somebody. And eventually I look up and see several people looking curiously at me, and then it dawns on me that this girl has been ranting for a good 10 minutes at me! She's sitting across from me but down a ways, and is glaring right at me and probably has been since we boarded the train. I kind of feel sorry for her because not only has she has been trying her damnedest to shame me for quite some time to no avail, several people are staring hard at her because they can't figure out who the fuck she's talking to...is it me or the guy next to me reading the paper or is she just nuts? She couldn't possibly be talking to me because I'm quite blithely listening to my iPod like I haven't a care in the world. Meanwhile, she's seething and talking louder.
Here's what had happened: earlier in the station where I got on, as I was walking down the stairs to the platform, someone stopped very short right in front of me. Right in front of that person, someone was crouching low to retrieve some sticks of gum from the ground and carefully restore them to the pack from whence they'd come. I tend to move pretty quickly when I'm trying to get from point A to point B, but in my defense I certainly did not "run over" any children, nor did I even touch anyone. What I did do was pull up quickly when I saw that someone had very unexpectedly stopped moving on a very crowded stair in the middle of morning rush hour.
I remember at the time being a tad surprised because the gum was of the $.25 a pack variety and while I'm certainly far from wealthy, it seemed that perhaps the gum was a lost cause considering how it was a crowded, busy stairway, not to mention the incomprehensible filth and disease found on the ground in the NYC.
As this recollection flashes through my mind I almost want to laugh. The world is fraught with cruelty and injustice and this is what she's going to take a stand on? How infuriating must it be to try to pick a fight with someone who, not only isn't cooperating, but doesn't even realize that you're all het up in the first place?
I'm sure in her mind I am another one of those fuckers who runs around all oblivious with their stupid fucking iPod pieces of shit stuck in their ears, and I probably am, but I actually did hear every word she said, it just never occurred to me in a million years that the whole shebang was addressed to yours truly. So she sits there stewing in her rage, and I do not even do her the courtesy of ignoring her. She simply does not exist.
The whole time, she is chomping loudly on her gum and I almost ask her how that subway filth tastes, but don't. Then, as I get off the train, I have the gall to give her this huge, dazzling smile, because that's the kind of child-crushing, happy-go-lucky asshole I am.