Mostly good or neutral experiences riding the Washington DC Metro. A few noteworthy bad ones:
- Shortly after Obama’s inauguration, afternoon, some teenagers were acting up and being deliberately loud. They started loudly saying provocative things, clearly hoping someone would take issue with them and they could then harass said person. This sort of thing happens every once in a while. In this case, they were black and male, but I’ve seen various combinations of race and gender do this; the common denominator seems to be age.
An elderly black woman rose from her seat and spoke calmly. I can’t recall what she said verbatim, but she old them not to act like that because “we have a black man in the White House now” and they should be improving themselves. They shut up in a hurry.
So it turned into a good experience, I guess.
- A nervous-looking young man got onto the car, opened a bible, and began loudly and mechanically droning his way through bible verses. It was clearly an act of “witnessing” to a trapped audience of strangers. He looked more uncomfortable than we were, so I’m sure he was fulfilling some requirement and it wasn’t something he’d thought to do on his own.
A bearded man using a cane for support began whanging his cane loudly against the aluminum pole in the aisle and bellowing “NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR THAT!” He wasn’t old, and seemed fairly vigorous in upper body strength, so he was completely drowning out the proselytizer with his violent banging and yelling. His fury was actually much scarier than the poor bible dunce’s weirdly halting behavior; it grew and grew when he realized the proselytizer would not, in fact, shut up. I thought Cane Guy was going to start beating Bible Dunce physically and maybe kill him. To my intense disgust, they both kept it up full bore for two stops, until Bible Dunce ran out of text and exited the train.
I didn’t want to be proselytized, but Cane Guy made his side look even worse.
- Once I was standing on a train because all the seats were full. This time the aisle wasn’t very full; there was lots of room to stand. I have a habit of planting my feet and moving them as little as possible; it keeps me from infringing on my fellow passengers and when they do whack into me, I can feel confident that it wasn’t my own negligence (because I know I haven’t shifted position).
So I’m standing there with lots of empty room around me and suddenly something leans against me quite hard. I turn around and look over my shoulder – it’s a tall man wearing a backpack. He’s standing with his back to me in the middle of an open area, leaning back on ME for support. (I’m a male but not very tall).
I don’t think it’s sexual or anything like that, because it’s a (very full) backpack touching me, not any part of his body.
The only things to lean on in the car are metal or Plexiglas, and they have no “give” at all, so if one ever pushes against something that sways, one KNOWS it’s a person.
This guy has to have seen me, unless he walked backwards onto the car and down the aisle. He HAS TO KNOW he’s leaning ON ME, and not part of the car. But maybe he’s preoccupied. I’ll send him a signal.
So I lean back, pushing him hard.
He stands straight for a moment, just long enough for me to think he’s gotten it. Then he leans back again. It’s not a shove; it’s not like he’s mad and is pushing back. It’s exactly like he’s relaxing, taking a load off, and I’m his hammock.
At this point I can’t believe it, so I shove him back AGAIN. No train parts will shove you, so he’s got to realize I’m a live human being he’s all-but-lying-on-top-of.
He stands straight for a few moments, without turning around. Then he leans back into me with a thump.
Honest to God.
So I turned around to face him and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “HEY.”
He looked at me with mild curiousity, as if he can’t imagine what I’m going to say. “Why are you pushing on me with your backpack? You have plenty of room! What on earth are you doing?”
“Sorry,” he says, mildly. He straightens up.
We ride in silence, back-to-back, not touching, for another three or four stops. Then, as we slow down for the next stop, a gentle pressure starts against my back. He’s leaning back against me again!
I turned around, glaring, just as he straightened up again and strode out the door onto the platform.
I have no idea what his issue was. That last lean was probably deliberate, but before that, he seemed genuinely (if mildly) surprised when I spoke to him, so I get the impression he didn’t realize the original incidents were a problem. I can’t imagine how anyone could fail to notice they were leaning on a stranger, but he did give that impression. Unless he’s a great actor. This was one of the least explicable encounters I’ve had.
- One time I was all-but-alone on the station platform – literally at least 50 feet in any direction from a person, on a platform 20 feet wide. A woman suddenly said “excuse me!” in my ear as she collided with me.
I checked my pockets, keys, and wallet as she rushed off. All present; as far as I can tell she wasn’t picking my pockets.
The weirdest thing was that she had to walk a diagonal to get back to where she was going, and I was not in a straight line between the escalator and her destination, so she’d literally walked out of her way to blunder into the only person on the platform.
.
The trouble isn’t worth it? I would have made one hell of a loud fuss and bent that grubby finger backward until I felt a satisfying pop, but then I’m not a Korean woman respectful of the elderly. Isn’t there a brilliant solution in Japan, by designating some trains ‘for women only’, since groping seems to be a divine right for the men?