Nosy

Sometimes it can be very easy to locate a seat on the subway, but at other times it can be rather difficult. A lot of people ride at peak times, and you can't just sit where there's a single seat unless you're desperate. You have to have some buffer room around you. Well, during these times you'll sometimes see a suspiciously unpopulated subway car, and if you're smart you'll consider that this is so for some reason that you'll discern only after it's too late.

The other day, I was headed somewhere on the train in a hurry. I observed that one half of the car was terribly full, and the other half was rather desolate. I didn't think too hard about why that was until I was halfway through the car on the way to a seat at the far end. That train car smelled fouler than I can adequately describe. I thought at the time that of all the dogs I ever had, this was a more putrid odor than I could attribute to any of them.

The smell belonged, naturally enough, to a vagrant. He was sleeping, and whether asleep or awake I doubt whether he was susceptible to his own scent. I know that when I went for weeks without bathing or deodorants in camping scenarios, I couldn't smell myself or those around me. How blissful that was then, but tragically on this day I was acclimated to being clean and being around others who were the same. I couldn't take it.

I was only on that train for two stops, but before we got to the first stop, I was determined to get off and make for the next car. I ordinarily don't do such a thing, for fear that I might somehow fail to reach the next car before the whole thing pulls away. This time, I was prepared to take the risk. I don't know if there's anything I might be headed for that I would mind being late for when the cost is subjecting myself to such horrors.

When we got to that next station, I rushed out onto the platform and made my way to the next car. There was no issue of gaining entrance to it before the train took off again. As I stood in the new car luxuriating in relatively clean, untainted air, what looked to be the remainder of the passengers from the old car (the vagrant excluded) stampeded into this new one. I was amused at the sight, knowing what the longer-tenured occupants of the car did not.

As I exited the train upon reaching the second stop, I looked at the people getting onto that earlier car and wondered at what was to play out in my absence as the train sped on towards downtown. What little dramas and comedies might transpire over and over again? I can only say with any measure of certainty that the final story would be one of tragedy, as the vagrant must inevitably have been ejected by rather brusque Sheriff's deputies.