Got Me Hot

There was this thing I saw that bugged me the other day. Now, I have a low threshold for annoyance. It doesn't take much with me, and that would be on a good day. On a bad day, things that don't bug me bug me anyway, but there are those things that are so firmly within the area of annoyance that it is irrelevant what sort of mood I am in. They put me in a bad mood anyway. Public transportation has a way of presenting me with such things.

What happened was that the other day, I was going someplace on the subway. It is typically the case that a crowd is exiting the station as I enter it, for I am getting on the very train they have exited. I enjoy the opportunity to ride the escalator down and watch the people going the other way. I also enjoy sweeping my gaze back and forth, taking in all of those who are there. This is out of curiosity and general situational awareness.

There was this guy, on this occasion, who was smoking in the station. He was not down on the platform, but at the slightly higher level where the ticket machines are to be found. U suppose that he just couldn't wait. I don't know what's with that. I've seen guys have their cigarette ready well before they are at liberty to smoke again, but they wait until they are outdoors again. This guy couldn't do that, and no one was stopping him.

I wish he would have given some sign that he knew he was doing wrong and bugging people like me, but that was not to be. He was shamelessly, flagrantly doing it, and the nature of things here is that when people don't do what they should, there is really no practical force to compel them. We in Los Angeles depend more heavily than most places on a social contract with nothing backing it but decency. That's probably why anything is bad here.