Notable Commuters: Weird Boots Guy

Fig. 1. Weird Boots

It’s been a while since I’ve just written a plain old observation. That, uh, is the name of the blog after all. And what better place to observe strange and fascinating creatures but within the MTA train system. As a creature of habit, I usually sit in the same train car every day. Unfortunately, so does a group of loud, obnoxious old men playing cards on what appears to be a pizza box. The first time I saw it, I was perplexed by how their group defied all unspoken rules of train etiquette. Whereas normally conversations or cell phone calls get you a look of death from other zombie commuters, these men shout, cheer and converse as if throwing back beers in a bar. Amid the noise of their gravelly smokers’ voices is the fluttery flipping of a deck of cards, conjuring images of leaves getting stuck in a bicycle spoke. Or similar. Not a card player myself (unless you count the drinking game “Asshole”), I have no idea what it is that has them so entranced. But I do hear them shouting things like “29? Is it 29? Whattawe got, 45 to 92?” What does it mean, readers? Anyone? Anyone?

This enigma aside, there is one passenger who gets on the train who cannot escape anyone’s attention. He is older, probably somewhere between, say 55 and 100. His tall, burly, Paul Bunyan physique is accented by a fluffy gray beard, a half smoked cigar hanging out of his mouth that he CHEWS all the way to the city, and—the icing on the cake—tall, knee-high funky black boots (see Fig. 1). The boots are what catch my attention every single day. If you only focused on them, you’d think (Punk Rocker? Goth? Motorcycle Mamma? Oktoberfest Partaker? Sadomasochist? Shit Shoveller?) until you look up and see that they are attached to Santa Claus with a bad cigar habit.

Weird Boots gets on the same car as me and immediately gravitates towards the card players like a fly to feces. He leans on the back of the six-seater they occupy and bends down, flagrantly invading their personal space. At first I thought he was part of the group—the silent observer, who, for lack of a seat, participates from above. But over the weeks, I’ve noticed he’s not. He is just a random guy, with weird boots, resting his cigar on the island pattern bald guy dealing the cards, watching every move they make like Big Brother watches all of us. When the train pulls in, he immediately exits without so much as a goodbye. The group in turn never greets his omnipresence with hello, goodbye, or what the feck are you looking at?!

Who is he readers? Only time will tell. For now I will continue to silently observe him as he silently observes them, while snapping secret photos of his boots (can I get a pair somewhere?) as I pretend to text my BFF in Spain.

Parting of the Subway Sea

Question: have you ever been on the subway when some sort of unidentifiable substance prevents you from sitting on a highly coveted chair? And, more importantly, is it really bad that I secretly hope someone DOES sit in it?

Seats on the subway are a luxury, especially in New York City where the trains are always overcrowded. While I commonly complain about the Metro North on this blog, it is nothing next to the shitshow that is the subway. Any hopes of silence, decorum or manners are thrown to the wind when on this mode of transport. People eat full meals on the subway, listen to music without headphones hoping to serenade you with their hideous selection, and will fight tooth and nail—against pregnant ladies or old fogies—to scap up a seat. Just the other day I myself was guilty of stealing a seat from a preggo…well, sitting down faster than she could waddle…while feigning a “feeling like shit” face to compete.

So when one walks onto the subway and the aisle is parted like the red sea, with nobody standing in a certain vicinity and empty seats a plenty, you know something is amiss.

Like the other day, for instance, when an unidentifiable smear of brown material frosted the top of the plastic seat. The smell emitted from the substance gave a good indication as to what it consisted of. When I first got on the subway, I saw the empty seat and immediately walked towards it. Till I noticed that half of the car was empty. Kinda of like when one has to recover from an unreturned high-five, I nonchalantly did a 180 and walked away, positioning myself close enough to see if anyone else fell for it, but far enough to avoid the noxious odor.

The several people after me who almost fell into the trap provided much amusement, as I watched with anticipation, almost as if waiting for a soccer (football to my European readers) player to score a goal. One by one I watched their eyes light up as they move determinedly to the spot, only to back away in horror as they got closer.

Then came the victim. She was a young, pretty, Asian girl who was obviously too tired to care. She marched over to the spot, looked at it, shrugged and plopped down right on top of it. “Argghhh…” I heard myself moan out loud before alighting at my stop. Was it REALLY worth it?

Anyway, this got me thinking…would this not make for a great reality show? A candid camera of sorts? Or am I just seriously sick in the head?

Thanks, But No Thanks

Lately I’ve started thinking that I’m going soft. My anger towards fellow commuters, children and humans in general just doesn’t seem to be up to snuff. At first I thought perhaps in my "old" age, I was starting to chill out and be “tolerant.” Then I pondered that maybe commuters are just getting better (boy was that wishful thinking). I began to panic: what the crap will I blog about if not my general distaste and angst with the world?

But just as I was trolling through the New York Times on the train for something to spark an observation—while reading about how sloths have an extra few vertebrae in their necks (wtf?)—annoyance struck. How could I even doubt it would?

I’d chosen the “three seater” because sometimes you get lucky and the seat between you and the other passenger remains free. I glanced over to see what I was dealing with. It was a bleached blond, middle age, rotund woman with furrowed eyebrows and a pair of chins pulling down the corners of her lips. I rolled my eyes and opened my Nook. She pulled out her traditional “book” and started reading. Every time a passenger around us spoke, moved, shuffled or tittered, my seatmate would tsk, shake her head and even get up to stare the person into submission. Apparently it was “reading time at the zoo” and she didn’t want to be interrupted.

I immediately put my phone on silent and turned down my music so that I wouldn’t get the stare down. The train was filling up, and just before we pulled out, a teenage girl hovered over me and asked if I could move in a seat.

Admittedly, I was annoyed. I even sighed in passive aggressive anger. But before I could consent and slide over or deny her, my angry seat partner opened a can of whupass.

“Are ya kiddin me? That’s just great. Haven’t heard that one befoa. Who the hell do ya think you are?” she said in a horrible Long Island accent. The teenager, clueless as they tend to be, blushed.

“What?” She asked timidly.

Chubs continued to shake her head uncontrollably. “You neva ask someone to slide in. She was hea first. That’s RUDE.”

“Um, why is it, like, rude? The train is packed.”

“Why is it rude?” (More twitching, make-up laden eyes opening wide) “Because it’s common knowledge that the middle seat is the worst seat on the train. And this girl…” (pointing to me) “…is too nice to say no, so she’s just gonna move ova and suffa.”

Half of me wanted to tell her to F off and mind her own fartin business, that I’m certainly not too nice, just too tired to care, while the other half of me reveled in the apparent discomfort of the poor teenage girl—teenagers having long been on my list of people I don’t like.

“Well what am I supposed to do? Stand?” the sulky teenager whined.

“No, YOU sit in the middle,” my defender said, leaning over into my personal space and using my legs as a boobrest.

By this time the girl was close to tears and I was tired of being silent. “Oh just sit down,” I said sliding over next to my aghast neighbor. “Jesus none of the seats are good anyway.” I sighed loudly a la Napoleon Dynamite, cranked up my iPod, and shut my eyes to block out the indignant look of the angry woman who'd tried to plead my case. So now not only am I going soft, but I am defending the very species (the annoying commuter) I abhor so much.

Fidget Fest

And March’s Most Annoying Metro North Commuter Award goes to…

Um, what? Not another annoying commuter post, you say? Oh yes, folks. You got a happy, feel good blog last week—filling my monthly quota. Saaarry. It’s angry blogger time (moohahahaha *holds pinky to mouth a la Dr. Evil*).

Now where was I? Oh yeah. Annoying commuter. So I’m sitting on the train minding my own business and trying to edit a dreadfully boring paper on business models, when “Fidget Woman” scrambles onto the train with an air of flustered self importance and dives into the seat next to me. She was all a flutter, trying to get herself “settled,” manically arranging and rearranging her several bags and zipping and unzipping her purse while simultaneously slurping the dregs of ice coffee from her plastic Starbucks cup, as if she was so busy and important that she had to multitask to sit down (even though she had an hour-long train trip ahead of her).

After finally achieving the appropriate balance for her pile o’ bags, she unzipped her purse and took out her cell phone. Aghast, I realized she had the key pad tones activated, and began to obsessively dial every contact in her phone while projecting a loud string of R2D2 beeps and chirps. After each call and subsequent irritating voicemail, she put her phone in her purse, zipped it, and took out a book, only to read maybe three lines and start the whole bewildering sequence again.

At one point, someone finally answered. The call went like this:

“Hi sweetheart? How are you my love?” (pause…)
“Wait…what? No…No…NO! Absolutely not. Why? Why do we have to? I just…NO. I can’t. I just can’t. I said No. Why can’t we do this tomorrow?” (pause…)
“Oh thank you. Thank you darling. Thank you so much for doing that.”

After this, she snapped her phone shut and returned to her book, where she must have ingested all of three words before unzipping her purse and grabbing her phone again.

“Really?” I finally said, turning to her. “You need the key pad tones blasting with each tap of your finger? You can’t just read your book? Why are you so fidgety? Read. Your. Book.”

OK, No, I didn’t say that. I just shook my head and tried to ignore her. And to put the literal icing on the cake, she then began to scratch her head profusely, a shower of powdered sugar scattering towards me and settling on my shoulders like freshly fallen snow.

Anyway there is a larger point to this rant. As in, why are people so fidgety? Are we so overstimulated by mixed and multimedia, the flickering lights of phones, computers and television sizzling our nerves, so that we can’t stand even one second of quiet solitude? A book doesn’t blink and beep enough so we get bored reading it? Man, I even know people who bring their phone into the bathroom to text (NOT me *cough*). Do all of these children really have ADD or is it just that they can’t sit still and focus unless being bombarded by the bright lights and loud noises of Call of Duty? In my opinion we all have freakin ADD! We can’t even sit on a train and read three lines from a book.

I suppose I should just carry a video ipod with me on the train. I could have put it on in front of Fidget Woman, and she, like a psychotic just given a shot of Haldol, would have settled into a quiet and zombie like state of submission.

People Annoy Me

As I age (at an ever-rapid pace), I notice that my tolerance for people is disappearing just as fast as my youth. Let’s be frank. People annoy the ever-living shit out of me. I’ve been told I get this antisocial trait from my father, and though I used to consider myself bubbly and outgoing, I find it increasingly more difficult to fake it when I hear and see idiocy unravelled all around me. Maybe it’s post-Valentine’s day annoyance that’s making me extra irritable (brings out the moron in people) or maybe it’s just another day in vexville…in any event, there’s a place I have to go every day where aggravating people convene in close, inescapable proximity: the Metro North train.

Last night coming home from Manhattan I sat in one of those cramped six seaters, with two rows facing each other. The only way to handle the heat, rank body odor and intrusive noises emanating from my fellow passengers was to push myself into the crook between my seat and the window and try to sleep. Amid the rustling of bags, cracking open of beer cans and subsequent guzzling (when did this become so popular?), stomach gurgling and cell phone calls, a shrill, shrewish voice rang out above all the rest. I opened my eyes in utter disgust and focused on the source of the noise, in the seat across from me.

Shrew: “Excuse me Sir (to the conductor), but why does the schedule say the first stop is Chappaqua if we’re stopped right now in White Plains?” (note: text does not do justice to the high-pitched, self-important, brash, nails-on-chalkboard voice. Wish had podcast to prove point).

Conductor: “Well we let people on here, but not off, so it’s not a real stop.”

Shrew: “But then the first stop is White Plains, not Chappaqua. What difference does it make if people get on or off? It takes the same amount of time. We are stopping, are we not?”

Conductor: (detectable sigh of annoyance, but trying to be nice) These trains are jam-packed as it is, we throw a few trains in with less stops to make it more comfortable for everyone.

Shrew: (waving her hands around and looking at the masses, as if trying to rile them) But that is faulty advertising! You’re misinforming people! Chappaqua is NOT the first stop.

Conductor: (first signs of ‘tude) I’m not misinforming anyone. It’s MTA. Take it up with them.

Shrew: Well, I will. It’s not right. I’m being misinformed. We all are!

Conductor: You’ll get to your stop at the time the schedule says. It’s not misinforming.

Shrew: This is ridiculous!

Me: (unable to hold back) Are you kidding me? How FAHreaking annoying can you be?

Businessman next to me: Seriously lady, shut the fu*k up!

Me: (giddy with sudden realization that the masses are now being moved by me) Jeesh! Some people have nothing better to do than complain. Get over it! This is what I have to wake up to?

Shrew: I’m a copyeditor. I pay attention to these things.

Me: So am I, you don’t see me complaining and waking people up!

Luckily at this point we did stop at Chappaqua and the bane of my existence stepped off, still complaining as she left. Me and the business guy had a chuckle as to how humans can be so irritating and then I closed my eyes in an attempt to ward off further annoyance.

And a few updates on former blog posts….

*I saw a man on the train this morning use the Kindle for something other than “finding keys” (see Earwig’s Delight: Key Books). Apparently it can also be used to pick up women. The man leaned over his chair, invading the space of the girl in front of him, who was reading her Kindle, and said in a husky voice: “Do you like your Kindle?” The girl, startled and somewhat disturbed, said yes and resumed reading. “Cause I like mine,” the man whispered seductively. Unfortunately for him, the Kindle did not pull through, as the girl turned to him and said “My husband doesn’t like it though, cause I buy even more books now.” Ouch!

*Last night the news showed Silent Bob of Clerks, Mall Rats etc. using Twitter to wage war on Southwest airlines for forcing him to buy two seats for his size (You tweet 'em into submission Bob!). The news then panned to many morbidly obese people outraged, claiming that people come in all shapes and sizes and the airline should accommodate. Have to say, sticking to my guns here on the entitlement issue (Fat is the New Thin). Yes airplane seats suck and could be made a little bigger for everyone, but by the same token if your ass is already on half of my unnecessarily small (but paid in full) seat, buy two seats please!