I Stand In Judgement

A train pulls into the station. I'm standing on the platform. I take stock of the cars closest to me. Crowded.

I step aside. I watch as Type A people get on. I wait while impulsive people, aggressive people and tardy people with poor time management skills shove their way on to the subway car.

People who hate their jobs push onto the train. There's laundry to do and dinner to fix at home so it won't be any picnic there. They're not thinking about that now. Get me out of here. Take this job and shove it. Except I need the job so I'll be back here tomorrow doing the same thing over again.

I watch entitled people and people without proper boundaries get on the train. I watch people who cannot delay gratification get on the train.

The icing on the cake is when a morbidly obese, sweaty man runs down the stairs and pushes himself forcibly on the train. For the love of god! He's literally throwing his weight around!

Step aside to let the people off the train the announcement says. All of these people ignore it. In their defense, the people exiting the train could step livelier.

Almost everyone gets on the train.

A small crowd assembles to catch the next train. An express train stops and people join me on the local side. More people come down the stairs and wait. The crowd swells. People crane their necks. Some lean ever so slightly over the platform to see if the train is coming.

The train pulls in. Acceptable. The air conditioner is going full throttle.

I won't get a seat for another two stops but this train is much more civilized than the last one. The last one was so full of desperate people that the folks standing in the doorway kept brushing against the closing doors which would cause the doors to open and close again and again. Sad.

One of our cohort from the platform gets a seat right away. There's not actually room for her in the seat because they are designed only for tiny people. So she does that thing that women do when it's seat but not really a seat. She sits at the very edge of the seat.

The ride is uneventful. Everybody gets along. Nobody smells bad. Nobody asks for money.  Nobody does Show Time. Nobody plays Mariachi.

A few minutes later I get a seat that the lady sitting at the very end of the seat, like a sparrow on a branch only much larger, could have gotten if only she'd waited. There's two slim people flanking me, so we all sit In relative comfort, our backs upright against the seat, our butts where they should be. As God himself intended.

From the archives:
Radio Silence
Chicken Scratch
This Shit Got Real