Who are the people on your train?
Posted by gkcct on February 24, 2009
(With apologies to Sesame Street)…
Who are the people on your commuter train?
Oh, who are the people on your commuter train?
Who are the people on your commuter train?
The people that you meet each day?
Okay, ‘meet’ might be a stretch. You rarely meet people on the train. You observe people as they endure the daily commute.
There’s the pre-10am crowd, dressed in suits, carrying laptops, and all but 2% wearing long, black overcoats. Taking a train before 10am means giving up any sense of personal space. Literally nose-to-armpit with no room to manoeuvre.
The far more entertaining crowd stumbles onto the last few trains at Waterloo, some time between 11 and 11:30pm. Miss the last train home and you’re faced with a 2 1/2 hour bus ride home, IF there even is a bus to your home. Many people in the late-night crowd wouldn’t pass a breathalyser test if they had to take one. While you will get a seat on the late-night train, you’re likely to be assaulted by the smell of Burger King. There’s probably other fast food too, but it seems Burger King odours overpower all others. (Note – there’s no McDonald’s in Waterloo, which is why there’s no McSmell).
I was never quite sure about the late-night, drunken, french-fry eating crowd, but I’ve come to realize that they provide great entertainment. Take for example the couple behind our seats a few weeks ago.
Take one slightly intoxicated computer geek with his nose buried in a tech magazine of some sort (I couldn’t quite read the title as I looked through the crack between our seats) with a bag from, where else, Burger King. Add a more intoxicated girl (definitely couldn’t see her face through the seat crack) who collapses into the seat next to Computer Geek. She is on the phone, relating the trying events of her evening, culminating with a sorrowful account of how she hadn’t eaten since lunch time and was literally about to collapse of starvation. Is Drunk Girl a bit of Drama Queen? Hard to say…. In comes Computer Geek, displaying a sort of chivalry and gallantry rarely seen these days. He offers Drunk Girl his Bacon Double Cheeseburger. She protests, he insists, she claims to feel guilty depriving him of his food, he responds by suggesting she needs it more than he does. And so it goes…and Drunk Girl eats the burger, eternally grateful, relaying the story to Friend on Phone the whole time. Computer Geek and Drunk Girl strike up a friendly conversation, culminating in an invitation from Drunk Girl to her Singles-Only Valentine’s Day dinner the next night. They exchange phone numbers, she tells Computer Geek that he really SHOULD take her up on the offer (after all, she says, he has nothing better to do, right?). It’s poetic…literally. She tells him that in 2008, Valentine’s Day was supposed to be great (and was everything but great), but this year, 2009, Valentine’s Day will be just fine. Using this logic, Computer Geek really should come to the party (says Drunk Girl).
We were tempted to follow them home (one of us certain that they’d go home together, the other a bit more sceptical), but Computer Geek got on a bus, and Drunk Girl went in the other direction. Did he text her, as he promised? Did he go to Balham for the party? We’ll never know. But the beauty of the late-night train is that there are always conversations like this on which we can eavesdrop.
