Looking On, Rather Wan

When it rains, it pours. After feeling like I had not been blessed with any remarkable public incidents to report on for some time, I had a couple in the space of a few hours. On this past Sunday, I had witnessed a seemingly drunken man and woman debating issues of dating and romance on a San Diego Amtrak train platform. Little did I guess then that there would be more to digest by the time I laid my head down to rest.

That train ride was more or less uneventful, but the same could not be said for the subway ride which took me across Los Angeles after the other train got me to town. Really, the subway train was mostly placid, but that stopped shortly before it reached the end of the line. I was listening to a comedy podcast, but raised voices started getting loud enough to pierce through that, and soon enough I had to take notice.

It became apparent to me that a short distance away, a rather large man was engaged in a dispute with several people around him, and it seemed to center around rather unwelcome overtures he may have made towards a woman or women there on the train. It took a good while before the thing began to get at all clear, and even then it never really did except that the general outline I gave above came out. I also heard him repeatedly declare himself innocent of ever hitting a woman. That sounded bad.

Things progressed enough that when the train reached the terminal station, security officers were apprised of the situation and directed to where they might find the man in question. They seemed disinclined to intervene, and were generally maligned as ineffectual except in hassling people over having paid the fare. It was an unfortunate state of affairs, and left me a bit down. I wish I could have done something.