I don’t like other people.
Don’t get me wrong, I probably like you. If you’re reading this, there’s a 95% chance that I know you, so you’re already on the right track. But I really hate strangers.
You know on movies where people ride the train know each other and start conversations at random? Yeah, that doesn’t happen. In real life, my ultimate goal is to carve out as much personal space as possible and guard that with my life. You stay out of my way, we can be cool. You infringe on my space, we got issues.
I deal with this every day when I commute one hour from San Jose to San Francisco on Caltrain. Thankfully it’s not BART. BART is an anarchy ruled mostly by the homeless. I’m talking about Caltrain, Smokey, this isn’t Nam. There are rules.
There are two levels on Caltrain.
The first level, I don’t bother with. Everything looks like this:
The seats are extremely close together so that my knees are pushed up against the back of the chair in front of me. I’m a tall guy. These things were not made for me. Which is why I work to get around these restraints.
Oh, and as you can see, there’s the option for somebody to sit next to me. No thank you. Space = invaded. Actually, since I’m most likely the bigger person in each scenario, I’m automatically encroaching on their space. Either way, no fun for anybody.
The second level is exactly like that, only there are single seats. So my knees are still jammed, but at the very least I don’t have to share that discomfort with anybody pushed up against my side.
However, and this is a giant however, there are two seats that offer a reprieve from the harsh white person problems I face on a daily basis.
The first is at the front of the second level:
If you can’t tell, those are two seats directly across from one another. Now, this may not seem ideal, but the seats are so close, SO CLOSE TOGETHER, that it is understood that this is one seat. One glorious seat where you can stretch your legs out (when the conductor isn’t looking, they really hate that feet on the seat thing) or at the very rest your knees against the cushion of the other seat.
This one is risky, though, because some people don’t always follow that unspoken rule. Sometimes a woman (always a woman, sorry ladies) will say “hey, there’s an open seat!”
Listen bitch, I know it LOOKS like there are two seats here, but you best take a closer look. Sitting across from me requires that I angle my legs as much as humanly possible so that you can do the same and we can both coexist miserably. Thanks for that. You’re lucky that I’m only an asshole in the privacy of my own home and don’t stand my ground, forcing you to sit on in your seat in the fetal position.
The other option, the one I prefer, looks like this:
Do you SEE that gloriousness? A double row, nestled in the back, with a seat that has NOTHING in front of it. Can you imagine the stretched-out glory that results from sitting in that seat? It’s like my own day spa for one hour. Reclining like a king, propping my foot up against the railing, working on my computer without it bumping up against the seat in front of me, even away from the glare of the window seat. It’s AMAZING.
Now, there are two instances where this is taken away and I am nearly driven to commit a crime.
1) There is a tiny-ass woman sitting in that seat.
This almost never happens. 99% of the time, it’s another guy sitting there, and 99% of those times it’s a guy big enough not to incur my wrath. In those cases, you got there before me, kudos to you. But if it’s someone just chilling there who CLEARLY does not need that God-given extra leg space…
2) Somebody is sitting in the seat next to the window.
This drives me nuts more than anything else. Say the second level is sparsly occupied, there are plenty of single seats available, but somebody has decided to go all the way to the back AND NOT USE THE SEAT WITH THE LEGROOM! So I can’t be the asshole that plops down next to them when there are dozens of single seats available. I have to go cram into one of those while the most coveted seat on the train gets occupied by some asshole’s bag.
All I want is to get on the train, not have anybody get close to me, be comfortable and not have anybody get in the way of my comfort while they’re staying out of my way.
Is that too much to ask?
