Riding the metro for an hour each day has taught me one thing: we need a book on metro etiquette. Like people in their cars who forget you can see them at a red light picking their nose, people on the metro seem to forget the other riders in the car can see them and all their weird personal habits. If it isn’t enough to dodge pesky tourists who clog the doors, weave through the crowd of zombied individuals to make it onto the correct train, then slide around people to secure a seat (facing forward for me since I seem to get a tad metro-sick), now I have to put up with “Miss I Overslept” putting on her make-up or “Little Miss Ashy” slathering on some violet smelling lotion. For those considerate enough to finish their personal hygiene rituals at home, other forms of passing the time are just as apropos.
To all the readers out there who take their morning commute to pick up a book or newspaper, I am quite jealous since I get a little motion sick. By now I could have probably mastered a foreign language, learned to knit or solved world hunger in all my free reading time. However, to the readers out there who choose to read some racy Harlequin romance, I can see you and I am laughing at you. These are the people who think by keeping their book close to their chest no one can see what is in it. Well last time I checked, all the covers of Mark Twain’s books had the characters fully clothed. You aren’t tricking anyone.
Finally, under no condition is there any reason for any display of PDA. The last thing I want to do when headed home from a long day of work is get stuck behind two high school lovers making out in the seat in front of me. I don’t care if in the movies it is cute to kiss underground. Newsflash: it is not cute – and not helping my motion sickness – to watch you macking the whole way home. The other form is the twenty-something couple who can’t keep their hands off each other while standing in the aisle. Just a thought honey, maybe you could stop falling at every lurch of the car if you took your hands out of his back pocket.
Riding the metro is a contact sport requiring mental preparation and physical agility. In order to secure the seat, avoid the making out tweens, miss the guy carrying the Indian takeout and circumvent the tourists with the matching t-shirts and fanny packs, you must be prepared.
