Train musings

This was a bit I wrote on the train going to work. Enjoy my train musings.

I am sitting on the train. There is a strange liquid covering the upper seating area's floor. It has no apparent smell.

The train is a microcosm of our world. We sit minding our own business stuffed in with people we don't know. Right now I see around the train a few business men working on their computers, two women of asian descent talking and drinking coffee. A young man sits in front of me doing homework. I say young man but looking at him I'd guess late high school early college. The size of the textbook suggests math or science, since as an english major I never had to heft tomes of that size.

A pair of middle aged couples sit on the lower level of the train. One couple looking possibly older than the other. Possible relation? Two generations on a train to chicago to see the city. Often families do that go to distant places in order to feel as though they are together. The idea of the family road trip for example. Or rather it is a chance to experience new things as a family.

Young and old, you see the pairing often and it invokes a warm feeling. The feeling that perhaps those two people are related and the older is sharing her experience while the younger shares her energy. Perhaps the two are simply different in age, no relation of blood but they share the same exchange, wisdom for energy.

The two men at the end of the train sit next to their backpacks. I myself have placed my messenger bag in the seat facing me on the train. We have marked out our territories made it clear that strangers should not sit near us. Lord knows what could happen if someone new sat next to us. Change is a terrifying thing, it takes us out of our comfort zones. Solitude is often a very comfortable thing.

I have taken the train two times a day for the past four and a half months, only two occasions have I noticed two complete strangers talking to each other.

One was these two college students who had been forced to sit next to each other, due to the heavy traffic on the train that day. One was a young man in his late teens early 20s the other a girl of the same age. She was from abroad, or recently moved to the US, since she had a very thick Japanese accent. The two seemed to have no problem communicating. I sat across the aisle from them and saw a lady in her mid 30s turn to them and ask if they had known each other, they said no. She commented on how nice it was that they have kicked up such a conversation.

The second was between two men, one a young man probably a junior in high school, the other a young man who had just graduated and was currently working in the banking industry. This was about the time of discussion of the fannie mae bailout. He was talking to the younger man about banking and currency. He came to the idea that since currency only equals buying power that eventually currency will be gone. We will see the emergence of the Amero to combat the Euro and then maybe an asian currency and an african currency as the world economies become more and more entwined. Eventually all we have is a credit score.

The other young man was going to see his grandmother for the weekend. He stated he had to go see them every couple of months to keep the birthday money coming in. But he was very interested in economics.

This was a conversation I jumped into from time to time. However only after I made a chuckle at a comment and the older man, about my age, turned to me and said I could chime in at any time.

I corrected him about a minor historical note he was making about germany inbetween the World Wars.

This is of course only the positive I am noting. There was an instance of negative interaction between people on the train. I remember a very distinct situation in which a man was extremely agitated and yelling at everyone in the train car.

He was an older man, with a long grey beard and long grey hair, all of it sitcking out in wild directions. He wore a hat indicated that he was a veteran. He had a walker, and this was what began his agitation. His walker was in the middle of the aisle during the afternoon rush. I was walking up the aisle looking for a place to sit. Now I saw just beyond the walker a row of seats perpendicular to the old veteran.

The man in front of me pushed the walker aside, he was in a hurry it seemed. I began walking past the man and saw the walker swing back at me. The handle of the walker hit at crotch level. Nothing more than a light tap but I felt my progeny wince for a second. The man began yelling. Saying how could you fuckers kick my walker. I slipped by the walker since I am a skinny guy and sat in one of the free seats. Sure he was agitated but I figured he'd be over it after that outburst.

I sat down. There was a bald middle aged man to my left. He wore large circular rimmed glasses and had a distinct look of apprehension. I soon understood why.

The old vet started yelling about how everyone in the train car were a bunch of pussies. How he was a special ops and he could fight anyone in the train and kill them with his bare hands. He challenged anyone to fight him.

At this point there was a line of people stopped behind the walker which no one was willing to move now. A man thin man in a grey pinstripe suit, with gray hair and a worried smile, asked the man if he could walk by. The vet said, sure you can squeeze by if you got no balls. The man squeezed by pushing the walker only slightly. The old vet said yeah you got no balls there do ya.

People quietly moved past as the man kept yelling. He made a comment about how all his friends had died defending us pussies and not one of us had the courage to fight him.

At this point I heard a message over the intercom telling all the conductors to come to the car I was sitting in.

Three of them came in, and the first moved the man's walker aside and told him he was getting off. The old man asked what stop it was and the conductor replied it didn't matter it was his. He asked for his walker, said he couldn't walk without it. The conductors gave it to him and as the old man walked out he flicked off the whole car. The conductor behind him swatted the hand out of the air. That was that, he was left at the Clybourn stop some ten miles out of the city.

I guess this is why we defend our space so fervently. We know that if we claim a spot people will be less likely to sit there and it reduces the chance of having someone sit next to us who will disturb our solitude.

Ogilvie Transportation Center is the next stop, time to go to work.