'Bred Crumbs
06.17.03
In which one commute yields four ramblings:
I
I had to break my usual direct train trip to work into two legs this morning, to stop downtown and get a new pass. So when I boarded, instead of moving to the center and standing in wait to pounce on a seat opening as usual, I just stayed by the doors, grabbing the overhead rail and arranging myself to make plenty of room for incoming traffic.
Suddenly, on my right side, I felt someone push me. Purposefully.
I turned to find a gray-haired man glaring at me. I wasn't anywhere near him, but I might have accidentally backed into the edge of the paper he was reading, and rather than doing anything resembling normal civilized behavior, he frelling pushed me. My reflexive reaction was surprise, followed by intense amusement I made no attempt to hide. But no words were exchanged, no insults, no apologies. He just returned to his paper.
I wondered for a second whether I should have called him on it, matched his aggravation with anger, but I figured there's enough of that in the world as it is. Then I wondered whether he would have laid a hand on me if I had been more intimidating – a foot taller, muscular in any way, of a different skin color than his, or wearing a gladiator costume.
Then I set my tiny wits to work trying to think of a new way to annoy him, but I couldn't come up with anything that would be feasibly "accidental." Apparently, though, my continued existence was annoying enough. Three stops after the push, he moved toward the far end of the car, not to sit down but to stand at the other, more crowded doorway.
By the way, I swear to [insert deity] I put on deodorant this morning.
I got off at the next stop, and saw him moving again as I left the train. I could finally tell what he was so intently reading: the Examiner. For those of you not from San Francisco, the Examiner in its current incarnation is roughly equal in regard and informational value to a weekly shopper, or a Learning Annex catalog, or one of those pulpy porn mags you can get out of beaten-up newsracks downtown, bearing titles like Yank or Schwing or Pud.* I saw the grim grayhead sit down with his rag in a seat near the end of the car, facing away from almost everyone else on the train.
Clearly, I was not the problem here.
II
On the last leg of my trip was a man wearing a blueberry beret, the kind you find at a Shriner-lodge store. The gold-trimmed-capped man must have had a serious ambulatory problem, for he was holding a brace and was perched on a big motorized scooter with a desk-chair-sized seat. A sticker on the back of the padded seat said NO WAR FOR OIL, but that was hardly the most striking thing about the vehicle. What got me was the small trash can mounted on the steering column. It was a trash can in design and practice, half-filled with bottles and wadded-up paper.
I found it bizarre and touching that this man, on top of his other problems, would need a trash can in arm's reach at all times. Then I saw that the bucket wasn't just for trash; one of the bottles in it was full.
And so I learned my after-school-special moral for the day: the differently abled are slobs. Just Like Me.
III
Maybe my Geek Test score was a mere 20 percent, but here's proof of my real nerd cred: I was truly excited today to see that the new BART system maps were up, showing the airport extension opening this weekend. After I got off my last train, I studied the shiny new map, with its altered destination names and one new color. I stood there for minutes until I realized I'd better go catch the bus. But that's OK. I'll have plenty of time to examine it waiting for the train home this afternoon.
And I seriously can't wait.
IV
Back to my recently developed ad obsession: several of the BART stations bear a poster for that mobile-phone network with that guy who constantly needs to be reassured that you can aurally experience him at the moment. In the ad, the guy has been photoshopped in front of a typical photo of the downtown San Francisco skyline. The manipulation is almost good enough for it to look like he's standing in front of a photo of the city. Almost.And I wonder what our reaction to this shoddy attempt at localization is supposed to be. "Look, that phone guy's standing in front of a picture of our city! Sign me up now!" Or are we supposed to be so impressed that they've pretended to care about us personally that we'll bite? Or do they imagine him so sexy somehow that we'll wander the streets thinking we'll bump into him, and get one of their calling plans on the off chance that we can reach him without roaming charges, or that he might text-message us with some tawdry, poorly spelled solicitation? cn u do me now? Good!
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* Or Maxim.
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