Don't Sit There

Coming home from work this evening, I got on a train and started to lift a piece of newspaper off the seat right next to the door. A person sitting across from me said, "Don't sit there, it's wet." I lifted the paper to find some sort of beige gunk. It looked like it could have been hummus, if hummus was more liquid than solid.

The next seat over also had papers on it, so I started to move those. The woman said, "No, that one's wet too," but I was a little too fast. There was more beige goo on that seat, which had gotten smeared on the paper, so now it was smeared on my glove as well. I moved away and the woman said, "I tried to warn you." She did try to warn me, so I looked at her and nodded and said, "Yes, you did," suggesting that I appreciated her effort. I used another piece of discarded newspaper to wipe off my glove.

At the next stop a man sitting next to the woman got off the train, so I sat next to her. We watched as people got on the train, and as they attempted to sit in the gooey seats, she repeated her warning for the benefit of the newcomers. Next stop, same thing, except this time there was another impatient person like me, who got goo on her hand despite my seat-mate's warning. She looked at me and said, "See, you're not the only one." I said, "It's like watching an experiment." She nodded in agreement and added, "a social science experiment."

Maybe it really was an experiment.