G'bleshye

Why do I always sit on the train next to a person who's obviously allergic to showers?

This and many other questions arise in my morning commute. I take the train to center city which takes about 45 minutes. I have been doing it for over a year and I've tried every legal form of killing time there is. Reading books, newspapers, listening to my ipod, giving strangers misleading and curiously charming winks... But somehow there is always one thing, albeit small sometimes, that seems to double its irritability with every station stop we leave.

Like now for example, there is a lady who has a giant white bag that partially obstructs the already menacingly narrow walkway in between the benches. She seems more worried about having quick access to her enormously obnoxious "sack" than to convenience her fellow commuters by simply placing it on the rack about ten inches above her head. The size of the bag I must bring attention to. It's like there's a stop after mine that I haven't seen yet where you're left alone in the complete wilderness and the only things you have to keep yourself alive must be carried in a giant bag. A bag big enough to steal small children and medium sized dogs. It could possibly be used as a pillowcase for someone who uses entire loveseats for pillows. Normally I wouldn't complain about this kind of stuff, but when you're on a crowded train and the only noise is electric motors, and abnormally loud cell phone conversation you seem to pick up and dwell on things.

For example, midway through the preceding paragraph a fellow commuter of mine sneezed. Naturally as I thought any civil-minded well-wisher would do I said God bless you (or how I lazily say it - "g'bleshye"). Well supposedly I was absent to the SEPTA train ethics board meeting where they decided the only thing more annoying than sneezing was someone saying God bless you. I know that people around me could hear the sneeze because my "g'bleshye" was at equal volume yet seemed to turn more heads than her sneeze. Not a thank you from our sneezer either. It was as if I'd committed a capital crime and she did not want to run the risk of being an accomplice. It's not the last time I say God bless you though. I don't give a shit what the ethics board says.

Okay, my stop is next. Time to stop hating everything I see.