pointed remarks.
This morning, when I got on the bus, I was the only person standing.
Which is cool… I don’t mind standing, because I sit most of the day, and also?
Squishing up to people is kind of meh on the best of days.
But my standalone moment was not to last, because another woman got on and walked the length of the bus to STAND DIRECTLY NEXT TO ME.
Not, you know, a couple feet away.
Or even a couple INCHES.
In fact, her bag was digging into my side from the second she arrived.
So I stepped away from her to occupy ALL THE ROOM THAT WAS LEFT to avoid the bag-poke, and do you know what she did?
She moved with me. And came in even MORE closely. Now there was something extra-pointy protruding from her bag into my side, and I had nowhere to go to avoid it.
Every bump we hit? POKE!
Every corner? STAB!
The whole trip? OW!
Even when I would try and angle my body a different way to reduce the poke, she would follow me and YIKES!
Eventually, I turned to her (with a kind smile, assuming the best) and said, “Oooh, I think there’s a little something that might be about to poke out of your bag, there.” and pointed at this THING that was leaving dents in my flesh.
She turned to me, smiled (with eerily unwavering eye contact), and said, “Oh, yes. Those are my shears.”
No moving the bag.
No apology.
No breaking her gaze.
“Oh, okay — just didn’t want you to lose them if they poked right out of your bag.”
At this point she shuffles in CLOSER. OW.
“I think they’re safe.”
“Great.”
At that point, I finally just went to stand at the front of the bus, so she and her poky bits could have their space.
She continued to stare at me until another man got on the bus, and her face lit up. He headed down the aisle past me, and within moments, I saw him jump and touch his side.
Yes.
Public transit IS awesome.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
There is something to be said about needlessly poisoning the environment.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Wow, thats just creepy.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Sorry about your trip. My horror stories with Public Transport, Boston: rescuing my foolish roommate as she walked down the aisle through a knife fight, causing the fighters to stop and look confused, because who walks through a knife fight?; being acosted by a creepy drunk old guy, when I was 16 and the oldest cousin taking my little cousins to a play; (and PS I was NOT a city girl); and having a stalker-like guy who lived in my building take the bus with me every morning even though it wasn’t the way to his work, so his also creepy roommate would follow by car and pick him up when we got off the bus at my stop and take him to work in the other direction. I forgot how stressful public transport is. Glad you didn’t end up with a new piercing!
March 7th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
What’s wrong with that lady? Why, oh why would she follow you around the bus? And not remove her shears from your side even after you told her they were poking you? This is the weirdest thing I’ve heard all day.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
You didn’t go far enough.
“Oh, okay — just didn’t want you to lose them if they poked right out of your bag… and further into my spleen, where retrieval might be difficult.“
March 7th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
Definitely strange! I wouldn’t have been so polite!
March 7th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Shears!? Why did she have shears in her bag? What the heck.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Malice is the word that comes to mind, with overtones of cruel, and an unknowable quantity of psychosis. She wanted to persecute someone. You were the victim. She wanted a much more full bus and probably found one later in the day.
As I read the post, there was something frightening about the sense of her actions. Maybe that was the writing.
I mean, the writing was sensible. I would never imply that it was frightening.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
How bizarre.
March 7th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I’m agreeing with Glenda here. I like to consider myself a relatively calm and collected person….but if someone is standing too close to me, especially if i don’t know them, I’m going to say something. It probably won’t be too nice either. Personal space is one thing you just can’t mess with.
and LOL @ Ike. Comments like that (the kind that make me actually *giggle* out loud) are going to get me in trouble at work. Curse having such a small office.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
You know Meg, maybe this comes from not liking the idea of being bullied (see my post on Anti-Bullying Day) but I would definitely would have taken her bag and turned the shears on her. “Oh… oops, did it hurt? Sorry, I just wanted you to know how I felt”
:) Enough said ;)
March 7th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Such a “touching” story. Oh how I wish people would observe the personal space perimeter. The world would be a less pokey place. :)
March 7th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Totally creepy!
March 7th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Ahh, yes. There’s nothing like boarding the 22 at Georgia and Burrard at rush hour- you’re in the middle of the line but of course while you wait your turn 20 people squeeze past you like maybe you’re actually waiting for the 98 only it doesn’t stop there. And then once you’re on the bus you look hopefully at all the empty space only to realize it’s a new one with only just enough seats to sit the 20 people who jumped the line. So now you steel yourself to go to the back. Up the steps, head down, into that little warren where *every* seat faces you and you’re the only one standing and where there’s really nowhere to stand such that you don’t feel like you’re in someone’s face, unless you hang from that bar at the back and face the wall, just like putting your nose in the circle on the blackboard in 5th grade. … and then you ever-so-discreetly reach down to check that you did indeed remember to zip your fly when you stopped to take a quick pee in the mad rush out of the office to catch your bus. Good times… that’s when I crank up the iPod and hope no one shares my musical taste.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Creepy. However, the first seven paragraphs remind me of a Seinfeld episode.
March 8th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Three words: Sweep the leg.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:57 am
The advice of Lou is good.
March 8th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Ignorance here speaking. What’s sweep the leg?
March 8th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
It’s a famous line from the movie “The Karate Kid”
[just before Johnny fights Daniel in the tournament]
Kreese: Sweep the leg.
[Johnny stares at him in shock]
Kreese: Do you have a problem with that?
Johnny Lawrence: No, Sensei.
Kreese: No mercy.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
In northeast Florida they let you drive your car on the beach. THere’s so much beach and not many roads, so if you’re willing to drive a couple of miles you can have a huge stretch of beach all to yourself. I spent four months there a couple of years ago, and every day I’d go down the beach a bit in my car, find a nice spot, park, and invariably, more often than not another car would park next to mine, then another and another.
There’s something weird, people don’t value space, they want to be close to other people, even when all the signals say the other people aren’t feeling the same way.
I could cite dozens of other examples. It’s gotten so I can predict that when I reach out to grab a cart at the supermarket, some other person is going to grab the same cart, as soon as I’ve made my intention known. It’s not conscious, I’m sure they’re not thinking about it at a conscious level.
Fascinating stuff.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
How weird! She must be conducting some kind of bizarre social experiment.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
You sure she didn’t walk right out of a Stephen King novel? Like ‘Misery’ or something?
March 12th, 2008 at 9:26 am
You know, that’s the kind of story that you read in magazines. It’s the kind that wins short story competitions. I’m surprised I didn’t read in the enRoute magazine or something. - especially the last paragraph about the other man. That was definately straight from a wierd airline magazine short story ;-)
March 12th, 2008 at 10:24 am
That is very creepy. The eye contact is just over the top. Some people do not get the concept of personal space.
Once, maybe 15 years ago, my wife and I were seeing a less than popular movie. In other words, the theater was just about empty. this couple comes in after the movie starts and sits next to us. It was infuriating, but not creepy.
Creepy is never good. Glad, for your sake, that she found someone else to enjoy her attention.