Did I just hear that?


Missy

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I've never seen a saw movie.

Ditto.

A female friend of mine just told me that if we can both get in shape by next year's Halloween (and by "we" I think she mostly meant me), we should go to our friends' annual Halloween party as Bucky-Cap and Black Widow. (she even said she'd dye her hair red and dress in black leather)

I think I may have just found the best weight-loss solution on the planet.

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Two teenagers talking about how Paranormal Activity was real. I'm seriously worried about this generation.

I remember arguing with people about whether or not the Blair Witch Project was real. Not just other teenagers either, but a few adults.

And I’m sure Dan Toland can tell us all about what it was like when the original War of the Worlds aired.

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Boss: Can you stay late half-an-hour? [Girl who is supposed to relieve me who is almost always late or sick] called in, but we found someone to come in.

Me: Yeah, sure. She called in again? Really?

Boss: Yeah. [Really trying hard to suppress a smile]

Me: What?

Boss: Well, she should probably stay home for a while.

Me: Fired?

Boss: According to her, Ebola.

Me: ...She should probably stay home, then.

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  • 2 weeks later...

More of a "Did I just say that?" but I heard myself say it so here we are.

A woman called into work yesterday and ask for a conductors wand. Why she called the electronics department I have no idea. She asked if I knew of any place in town that might have one. I said that there is music shop called Sweet Chin Music. I said this five times as she was kept asking the name. Store is called Sweet Man Music, which I remembered five minutes later. Then I had the image of Shawn Michaels owning a music shop and everyone that walks in get a superkick.

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  • 3 weeks later...

When I ride the train to work, I always sit in the rear car and try to take the very last seat. It faces the opposite direction the train travels, and provides a nice view of the surrounding neighborhoods. And because it's segregated from the rest of the train car, there's an extra bit of privacy that comes with it. Today, however, someone was sitting there, so I obviously (and rationally) chose another seat.

One stop later a woman with a hefty backpack got on, and headed for that very seat. When she saw it was occupied, she said something to the man sitting there. Even though I was nearby, I couldn't fully hear what was being said. After about two minutes of this, she walked over to the Emergency Call Button and contacted the train operator. My iPod was on, so, again, I didn't hear everything she said, but I caught the back half of it: "... pay for one seat, but he's taking two."

"Okay," the operator responded with more than a hint of annoyance in his voice.

"You should really come down," I couldn't hear how she finished that statement.

"Ma'am, maybe you should move to another car."

"You know what, I'm just going to call your boss to report you not doing your job."

At that point he disconnected the call, and got the train moving again.

She then took a seat not too far from mine, dropped her bag to the floor, plucked a cell phone from her pocket, and made a call. Interested in what I missed, I casually turned my iPod off and patiently listened to her end of the phone call.

After being placed on hold for about five minutes, she finally spoke to someone: "Hi, I'd like to report a conductor for not doing his job." To an unheard question she answered, "Yes. Yes," and then continued her story, "When I boarded the train at Granville I tried to sit in the back... yes, this is in the last car... and I couldn't sit there because a man had his bag on the seat. When I asked him to move it, he refused."

At this point I realized this woman was simply a troublemaker. Each CTA train car seats 50 people. There were only seven people in this car. She could have sat anywhere else, yet, when she couldn't get the exact seat she wanted, she threw this fit.

The call continued: "It's my understanding that when we pay for a ride we get one seat. Not one for us and our bags, and he has his bags on the seat next to him and refuses to move them. And when I asked the operator for help, he wouldn't do anything."

Again she paused to let the agent speak.

"He told me to move to another car."

Another pause.

"I understand he has a schedule to keep, especially with the snow, but I wanted that seat, and he should have done something about it. The situation could have gotten ugly. I was mad. I am mad. And I don't know what I would have done. I felt unsafe and nothing was done about it."

Based on her following response, I assume the customer service agent asked, "Was the car full?"

"No, there are other seats, but that's not the point. The point is, I wanted to look out that back window. I wanted to have that scenic view. But he wouldn't move his bag. I mean, we're not supposed to put our bags on the seats. There are even announcements about it. That's not his seat. It's not my seat. It's our seat, and he took it."

This call went on for a good 20 circular, nonsensical minutes, but at one point take a guess what she did.

Come on, guess.

If you guessed "she picked her large backpack up off the floor of the car and placed it on the seat next to her" you win! She didn't leave her bag there for only a moment. She didn't pull something out, then place it back on the floor. No, she left it there for the remainder of her trip, which was about another 10 minutes, all while continuing to complain about the guy having his bag on a seat.

Though I don't long for confrontations, I do wonder what would have happened if he wasn't sitting there when I got on. Had I taken that seat, would she have confronted me too, and what would I have done? Granted, I don't place my bag on the adjacent seat, but would she have asked me to move nonetheless so she could have the little corner to herself? Deep down, I don't think I would have. If the car were full, maybe I'd give it up. If she were elderly or handicapped, then she wouldn't even have had to ask. But we're talking about a perfectly fit woman in her early to mid twenties.

There's also a part of me that thinks she wouldn't have confronted me because we're both white, whereas the other man whom she did confront was black. Normally I'm not one to point fingers like that, but it was her tone throughout the conversation; the way she said "I felt unsafe" smacked of a barely hidden racial bigotry. I don't know. Maybe she's simply a nutter whose actions can't be explained, and I'm reading too much into it.

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When she put her bag on the seat I so wanted to silently catch her attention, look at her bag, then back up at her to see if she got the irony. But honestly, someone who presses the Emergency Call Button and then calls the customer service line over something like this is not someone who would find humor in being poked fun at.

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One time on the Skytrain (essentially a monorail for Vancouver and its closest suburbs) three guys were walking through one car and grabbing people's hats/bags/etc and leafing through stuff and just taking it. One guy even smacked a kid. These guys were about 22 I would say and I sat at the far end in a seat not unlike the one Mike described listening to my Discman as they approached me.

I took off my coat and discman, stood up and said "Come closer and I'll fuck you up."

The biggest guy hit the emergency stop button (to which I thought "Oh shit, I'm dead") and instead of attacking with a guaranteed shield from transit cops for a short period of time, the big one ratted me out for threatening him. !

The other passengers backed me up and they got pulled aside but I could hardly stop myself from laughing when he tried to rat me out.

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