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meg fowler tripp dot com
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “pointed remarks.”.
There is something to be said about needlessly poisoning the environment.
Wow, thats just creepy.
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!
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.
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.“
Definitely strange! I wouldn’t have been so polite!
Shears!? Why did she have shears in her bag? What the heck.
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.
How bizarre.
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.
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 ;)
Such a “touching” story. Oh how I wish people would observe the personal space perimeter. The world would be a less pokey place. :)
Totally creepy!
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.
Creepy. However, the first seven paragraphs remind me of a Seinfeld episode.
Three words: Sweep the leg.
The advice of Lou is good.
Ignorance here speaking. What’s sweep the leg?
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.
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.
How weird! She must be conducting some kind of bizarre social experiment.
You sure she didn’t walk right out of a Stephen King novel? Like ‘Misery’ or something?
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 ;-)
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.