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ornithopter: My Commuter Rail Nemesis |
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(We will return to the Shumai tour diary ...well, whenever I get a chance to get back to it, to be honest with you,) but now I have to vent. Ever since Erik and I moved to Providence, I've been commuting to my stupid job in Boston. There's no way around it, this commute sucks. One and a half hours one way is a short commute for me. But this is not what I am complaining about. I have a nemesis on my commuter train, my own Baby Gerald, if you will, but in old lady form. Picture a shabbily dressed Joan Plowright, minus the British accent and the great acting resume.
My first run in with her was on the first day I took the train from this station. She was holding the elevator door open, a smug schoolteacher smile on her face and a faded animal print pantsuit clinging to her pudgy frame, until she was satisfied that it was packed tight enough for her liking. We stood there for about 5 minutes, thus negating the usefulness of the elevator, except for the terminally lazy who can't be bothered to use the escalator.
A couple of minutes later, as I was trying to get out of the garage, a car in the lane in front of me was stuck at the exit gate and everyone in my lane had to merge over in order to get out. As I 'm trying to do this, I notice this woman sitting in her car, not making eye contact with anyone and honking her horn at 10 second intervals. Also, everyone else is working on the "let one car go, then pull up" merging principle except for her. She has her front bumper pinned to the rear one of the car in front of her as if letting one car in there will make any difference whatsoever to her commuting time. This will, apparently affect her sense of self-satisfaction, though.
Incident two was a couple of weeks later. Now, these commuter train seats are not the most plush, comfortable seats I've come across, nor do they comfortably accommodate those who are larger than normal in any body area. Legroom is pretty much non-existent. So anyway, she got on and sat herself down in one of two seats that faced each other. The standard way that people do this is that the person on one side sits by the window and the person on the other side sits on the aisle and, voila, you have enough room for both people's legs.
Well, this will not do for Mrs. Doubtfire. She has to sit by the window for some reason, so she gives the very tall man across from her a very loud, "Excuse me!" and plops her butt down on the seat. Now she finds that she has no legroom, so, instead of just moving over, she slaps the guy in the legs and says, "Will you please move your legs!" Well, the guy tries, but, really, there's nowhere for him to go, so she just throws her legs up on the seat and pretends to read her Mary Higgins Clark novel, while silently judging him. She makes a second attempt to get the guy's legs to shrink with the power of her own importance, but to no avail.
This morning was incident number three. She got on, gave some guy an indignant "excuse me" because there wasn't enough room for her big fat butt on the seat with his bag there. He quickly moved it, but that wasn't enough. She then inspects his lap and says, "Can you please move that?" The guy looks at her, perplexed, and motions to his bag. "What, this," he says. "No, next to the wall," she snips. "That's me," the poor guy says, "there's nothing I can do about that." She then sighs and looks disapprovingly down the aisle. I gave her a withering look and shook my head. I, frankly, cannot wait for her to try that shit on me. Then we'll see who's self-satisfied when I pop a cap in her ass.
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