Adventures in the daily train.

I stumbled onto this blog entry earlier today and made a mental note:

I too have been confronted by the bad manners of other commuters. I was raised mostly by my grandmother, she had what more or less would qualify as custody of me, unofficially of course, while I was growing up and she thought me manners. Now I'm in my late 30s and well mannered, I can say "please" and "thank you" and "good day" to people.

Even servants in restaurants, hotels, etc. I once even thanked a police officer after he gave me a speeding ticket. Granted, in the US. Still...

So it's always with some apprehension that I take the train, people don't have manners. Even older people. Yesterday, I arrived in my train a few minutes early, sat by a window, took out my Archos media player and started watching Dollhouse on it.

As I was relaxing a man came to sit next to me, and he took up, I kid you not, 2/3 of the double seat.

As if that wasn't enough, he then took out a laptop and placed it on top of a huge bag on his lap, which of course also meant he had to have his elbows up really high, right by my face.

As a result I sat there like an idiot, munched against the side of the train, in about 1/3 of the space this inconsiderate bastard next to me was taking up, watching my Archos screen with an elbow in my face. In retrospect I should've told him to go fuck himself, please.

Occasionally, very occasionally, a pretty girl will sit next to me. This is very, very rare. In fact, I don't remember the last time it happened.

In the morning I've condemned myself to sit across a lady that works in my office and happens to live in my neighbourhood, she's talkative and relatively pleasant but, consider that I enjoy watching my tv shows onto portable media devices in the train.

I'm not usually in the mood for chitchat with her.

On the other hand, there is a woman that takes the train in the evening and that disembarks at my station whom, I definitely wouldn't mind chitchatting with.

But that's also going to be improbable at best.

Incidentally, the red-head at the ice cream parlor gave me another free milkshake last Friday.

Also yesterday, as I was crossing the park in front of the Sun Life building with the chimes playing, a young girl in her twenties approached me and asked me what the sound was.

In a way, I was in a hurry to catch my train so I didn't want to start a conversation with her but part of me wanted to. She was cute, is that wrong?