how quickly we regress

It's Friday and we are compactly packed into the first subway car so that once we arrive at our destination which is the same destination we are all destined to, we can file out first and not have to fight are way around a mob of people to get to the elevator from the overly filled platform clearly not designed to accommodate the number it receives daily. We all know the consequences of being in the this car because it is the same every morning. We know we will be pushed, and stepped on, and have to fight for a little spot in which we can hopefully grab on to something so as not to be jostled by the conductors heavy foot. We all know it's a bit unbearable and there are always some remarks, or some one who gives someone a look or someone who is so closely wedged beside you you are certain you know his/her face better then the persons significant other. Yet occasionally we get people who do not know all these things or who refuse" to comply to the first car inconvenience in order to get to work early and avoid the painfully slow moving mob on the extremely narrow platform. For just this Friday, there were these 2 woman who just don't understand these very basic ideas. Instead, they decided this subway condition we were all enduring was cause to fight over.

"you're stepping on my foot"

i said i was sorry

i don't like your attitude and it took you too long to get off my foot

get over it

and on and on this very circular conversation went in a loop as most arguments do

when thinking it would evaporate, i close my eyes to hear yells and everyone is looking at the two woman pushing each other on a subway car that is so compact i can barley turn my body around. They are forced apart by other passengers and one woman is told to get out at the next stop. The man holding the other woman is patting her back. How patient he is i think.

How can this be? That people are so willing to fight and demean themselves like children over a broken toy neither of them wants. Why don't they fight for a better life so they wont have to take the subway. No, they risk broken teeth, black eyes and humiliation over nothing. For their is absolutely nothing to gain. And even if they don't know how to behave in public, they must at least know that everyone had a good laugh at their expense.

Undesirable Bubble Effect

I took the subway, which was packed, which is ok, because it was peak, and peak is always packed but then came in this trashy girl with a huge flower tattoo sitting above her but (which we all had a nice view of due to her extremely low cut jean), super oiled up hair, fleshy protruding stomach, person, who casually leans against the holding pole while dropping a dirty tissue.

No one can now hold the pole, nor do they seem inclined to tell her that no one can hold the poll if she leans against it, so instead they stretch their hands up above her oil ridden hair. There is bubble around her from people avoiding her as much as possible even though every square inch of the car is densely packed.

She is a living billboard screaming: I have no respect for myself, have every STD known to man kind and I am familiar with jail and prostitution. We are all thinking the same thing as we are jostled to and fro from the many stops and starts of the subway while cautiously maintaining the bubble. When is she getting off?

When off she goes... and in enters a fresh set of people who go for the area on the pole that we still refuse to touch when a girl says "ew, that's oily".

I mentally make a note to avoid places on the subway that seem strangely vacant when a car is so packed. It's the undesirable bubble effect.