Bradley's Old Fashioned Weblog

It seems like there’s an endless number of crazy people in New York City, and an endless variety of the types of craziness they may be suffering from.  I encountered another one tonight on my way home, on the train this time.

I had to stand for the first leg of the trip, but when we reached the 1st stop, a seat was freed up, so I moved to sit down.  It was one of the benches at the end of the train car, where there are only two seats in the row.  The other seat, the one closer to the front of the train car, was occupied by a small black lady, dressed fairly regularly, gnawing on a lollipop like a crazed beaver trying to gnaw down a tree.  I figured she looked harmless enough so I took the other seat.

I’d barely sat down when the woman said, “Oh you can sit down, but I have big legs so watch that you don’t sit on my legs.”

I wasn’t sure I heard her right, so I asked her if she could repeat herself.

“I have big legs.  You can sit, but you have to be careful that you don’t sit on them.”

I looked at the woman’s legs.  They were shorter than mine and no bigger than any other average sized person.  She was actually a small woman.  So, of course, I realized she’s crazy and I had to defuse her craziness so that she wouldn’t turn into a violent lunatic and make the next few minutes on the train unpleasant.

“Oh, don’t worry.  I won’t sit on your legs.  I’ll just mind my business over here and play a game on my phone.”

I had indeed been planning to play a game on my phone.  I’d downloading something during my break where you try to free a particular block from a puzzle to clear a stage.  I had my phone in my hand already and had opened the game.  I was hoping that this would cause the woman to realize that I didn’t want to bother her, and that I was preoccupied and not ready to talk to her.

Instead, it backfired.

“Oh, games! I like games! What game is that? It’s some new one huh?”

She then proceeded to reach over and start pushing buttons below the screen on my phone.  I thought about getting up and moving away but you never know what might happen, what a crazy person might say, do or have on them that could be potentially lethal to the innocent sane people around them, so I decided the best way to get past the problem was to just humor her.

So, I sat there, trying to explain to her that she had to use the touchscreen to move the pieces.  I didn’t let go of my phone of course, and it was sort of amusing to watch this old woman getting pissed off over a touch screen game where the blocks only move in certain directions.  She couldn’t seem to figure that out.  Horizontal blocks only move horizontally and vertical blocks only go vertically.

“What the fuck? You do this. Move that motherfucker right there over that way.  Get that block out of the way. How the fuck does this thing work? This shit won’t move!”  She was stabbing at my phone with her bony fingers, cursing, getting irritated, and still gnawing on her lollipop.  I saw several sprays of saliva fly from her mouth, thankfully onto the floor, and just as I thought I was going to have to risk her flipping out and accusing me of everything from picking on an old lady to racism to having a magic game that fucked her over, or perhaps swinging at me with her bag, the train pulled into the next station, my station, and I excused myself and got off the train.

As I exited the train I heard the woman say, “You have to be careful with your bags if you’re going to sit down. I have big legs.”

And a woman replied, “Oh, did I hit your legs with my bag? I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s just that I have…” I heard her saying, and then I was too far away to hear.

I think from now on, I’ll just stand.  Or at least not sit next to anyone past the age of 40.  It’s only two stops anyway.

Today, on the way home, I got another dose of crazy while using public transit.  While I was standing on the platform, waiting for my train to show up, I saw a coworker, so we started talking about some crazy stuff that had happened during the day.  When the train finally arrived, we snagged some open seats and talked until we got to my stop, Union Square.

This is where things took a turn for the bizarre.  As the train pulled into the station and started to slow, I stood up and crossed to the side where the doors would open.  I gripped the rail with my right hand, the one that runs from the floor to the ceiling at the end of the row of seats, and I held my hat in my left hand.  There was a guy standing in front of me.  He was a black man, and well dressed.  When the train stopped, the doors didn’t open right away.  He looked over his shoulder at me.  Then he shifted a bit and turned half towards me and mumbled something.  I didn’t quite catch it so I just ignored him and put my hat on, so my hands would be free for the climb up the stairs from the platform into the station.

When the doors opened and we started to get off the train he said something to me again, but I still couldn’t hear it over the noise, so I leaned a little closer to him and said, “Pardon?”

“You need to back the fuck up off me, bro.”

Uhhh.  Well, we were walking with the group of people all rushing for the stairs, so I didn’t give it too much mind.  It’s not like a person can expect to have a lot of free space in that situation.

When we turned the corner of the rail and started up the stairs, the guy looked back and when he saw me, he jumped a bit, like he was surprised, and then bolted up the stairs, taking them three at a time.  When he hit the top, he took off at a dead run through the station.

The woman next to me gave me a questioning look.  I shrugged and said, “Crazy fucker.  He thought I was following him or standing too close to him or something.”  She just smiled and shook her head, as if she’d seen it before herself.  I suppose she had.  New York City seems to be half full of crazy people at any given time.

I understand that people have a desire for personal space, and that desire is magnified when living in a congested city, constantly surrounded by people, but this guy’s reaction was unreasonable given the circumstances.  I wonder what exactly set him off this time?  I was dressed in business casual, chatting with another person in business casual, and I didn’t act oddly when I positioned myself to exit the train at a stop, so it’s not realistic for him to have thought I was a potential robber.  It’s also not reasonable to expect to have no one behind you when exiting a train at a station, or when climbing the stairs to the platform.

In any case, this just reinforces the fact that when you’re in New York City you have to stay aware of the people around you.  You never know who might snap, or when, or why.