TRAINING REQUIRED
You are on a crowded train. You are standing up, elbow to elbow with your fellow commuter.
The train arrives at your destination and, on the platform, people are waiting to get on.
The doors open, and you move to the door to get off, yet the people waiting to get on just stand there, in front of you, utterly oblivious to the simple fact that you cannot walk “through” them as if you were a ghost.
No. There they stay, rooted to the spot, these brain-dead zombie halfwits, all dead eyes and slack jaws, the inbred mountain men from “Deliverance” as Urban Traveller*.
And, just recently, this having happened many times previously, it happened again, and I did have myself a minor Howard Beale moment …
“WILL YOU GET OUT OF THE FUCKING WAY, PLEASE!”
And they did. Very quickly.
I applaud myself.
*Maybe it’s just a Brisbane thing.
February 10, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Ross, I heard a rumour that you have some teeth left.
February 11, 2012 at 1:35 pm
“*Maybe it’s just a Brisbane thing.”
No. Try getting off at Town Hall, or Central on any weekday, platforms full of the standing dead.
And escalators. Why is it so many people find the end of the escalator the *only* place they can stop and chat?
February 13, 2012 at 1:16 pm
No, Sydney, too. And that was pretty much my response, word for word, to a stupid old prick at Redfern.
But there are so many train crimes, aren’t there? From the aisle sitters to the my-bag-is-tired-and-needs-to-sit-down morons. Or the, I’m-just-gonna-stand-here-in-the-doorway-because-I’m-getting-off-soon-or-soonish muppets.
The high level of thoughtlessness is gobsmacking.
February 13, 2012 at 1:27 pm
You know the walking footways at the airport? Why the fuck do people get on them and just stand there? And escalators: 2 abreast, just stand there. They’re not bloody carnival rides. Everytime I see it, I wonder, are people even conscious of the world in which they move. THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN IT.
February 13, 2012 at 2:20 pm
The oddest one, though, is the person who walks up the escalator but stops as soon as it flattens out at the top. That’s the easy bit. Why walk in the first place if you’re going to throw the towel in as soon as it gets easy.
And you’re a better man than me. I don’t think I said please when I told him to get out of the fucking way.
February 13, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Adding “please” just throws them. It takes the comment from random abuse to desperately expressed plea. I like doing that.