I'll tell you what day it is.....it is a Monday in disguise. I knew yesterday's 'good Monday' was a fluke. I should know better. No good Monday goes unpunished. There's no such thing as a good Monday! Monday will just manifest its suckitude on another day. Today is that day. Monday was just waiting an extra day to arrive. It was just lulling us into a false sense of hope that maybe this week wouldn't be so bad after all.
Tuesday is the new Monday. At least for this week.
Maybe I wouldn't feel this way if I hadn't been awakened at 5:33 AM, a full thirty-eight minutes ahead of my alarm by a noise in my ceiling. And not just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill apartment-ceiling noise. That I could handle. No, this was a deliberate and repetitive sound that went on for nearly 15 minutes before finally stopping. A noise something akin to people practicing a figure skating routine with two-by-fours strapped to their feet. The strange thing is that my apartment building has concrete between the floors specifically to guard against such errant noises. I typically can't tell when the clod-hoppers upstairs are plodding towards their refrigerator for a snack while the Jerry Springer show is on a commercial break. So this must have been something in between the ceiling and the concrete. And lucky me, it had to be right above my $%#*ing bedroom.
Good times. (I hope you're picking up on my sarcasm).
I still had hope this day could be salvaged though. Even with the fact that my fantasy football team wound up losing AGAIN this week, I still had hope that Tuesday would not retroactively become Monday. But remember how I take public transportation to work every day?
Yeah.
So there I am, in one of the "three-seater" seats, sitting happily all by myself until about halfway through the ride. It's incredibly rare to have a seat to yourself the entire morning commute, and I've come to accept this. But just because you have to share a seat with someone does not mean you have to sit right on top of them, right? Well apparently, there is a girl on my train who doesn't agree with this. Or she's not aware of the love all normal Americans have for their personal space. Either way, I hate her. She's sat with me on a total of four occasions including today, and each time she has, she will slide into the middle portion of the seat, thereby sitting rightontopofme despite the fact that there's plenty of room for her to STAY ON THE OTHER SIDE!!!
Am I wrong? Am I just letting my childhood backseat behavior and experience with my brother manifest itself into my adulthood? You know what I'm talking about. The whole routine siblings had for surviving the backseat on long car trips to Grandma's house. The proverbial, but very much real, line down the middle of the car that marked your respective territories.. Across this line, you DO NOT. This is my dance space, that is your dance space. The threat of punishment rendered if any sibling violated this most-sacred piece of backseat etiquette was so severe, no one dared to even get close to the middle of the seats. We'd wedge ourselves as close to the walls of the car as possible.
What happened to this custom? I propose an immediate re-institution of this policy on all modes of public transportation.
That's the exact reason I choose the "three-seater" seats in the first place. And I put that in quotes because, let's face it, the "two-seater" seats aren't big enough for 2 people and the same holds true for the "three-seater" ones. The reality is, they're for 2 people. It's uncomfortable when three people have to sit there. Therefore, when you sit down in a "three-seater" where one person already is, why oh WHY would you move closer to that person? It just doesn't make sense to me. Have we learned nothing from Seinfeld and the close-talker? People don't want to sit right next to strangers on the train! This is the exact reason why Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train" would never work today -- nobody talks to each other on the train, and that's the way we like it.
So needless to say, the close train-sitter further soured my morning. I have to say though, venting on this blog has made me feel slightly better though. That's a plus.
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3 comments:
I'm telling you, Sassy... Not only should there be a mandatory hygiene standard for riding public transport, but John Heffron's bit about riding in the car with his family ought to be required listening.
"Who here ever had to sit in the middle hump suck seat?"
Oh yeah. Except in my case, my sisters always got to sit in the seats, and I was always relegated to the very very back of the family station wagon.
Oh, and the preferred nomenclature for the phenomenon you're describing about today is "MonTeus"--a Tuesday that for all intents and purposes, is a Monday.
Tell Walter.
Absolutely those should be mandatory.
I lucked out in relation to the hump seat/backseat wars for the most part, though. It was only my brother and I. But God forbid if my parents had one other kid...I shudder at the thought of more than two of us in the backseat.
As for the way, way, way back of the station wagon, I would have loved that. I was always jealous of kids whose parents had station wagons. I remember trying to convince my mother to get a Buick Roadmaster solely so I could hang out in the very back of it while we went on car trips.
In retrospect, my mom was not now or ever a station-wagon kind of gal, so that was probably a good thing that she didn't grant me my wish.
The back of the family truckster was okay at times, but when I was sitting back there with the rest of the luggage and the family dog, while my sisters were lounging like royalty on the main seats... well, it got a little old after a while.
Plus the fact that the inside latch was broken, so I always had to wait like a prisoner for someone to let me out.
However, the back of the station wagon was a good place to try and get truckers to honk their horns. So, y'know...it wasn't a total loss, I guess.
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