Coffee Puddle

It's very interesting to observe how different people react in certain situations. When I got on the train after work, I sat next to a seat that had some spilled coffee on it. I had a section of newspaper that I was done with, so I tried to use it as a blotter, which sort of worked, but it was still iffy.

At the next stop someone attempted to sit down next to me and I warned her off. A grateful look crossed her face, she said thank you, and moved on to another part of the train. Same sort of situation at the next stop.

At the stop after that an older woman who looked a bit unsteady on her feet headed toward the seat. She was wearing an apple-green poncho with pink flowers on it. It looked to be made of vinyl, and reminded me of nothing so much as an old tablecloth, the protective kind like you might have found in your grandmother's kitchen 50 or 60 years ago. I warned her about the coffee, and she looked right at me and said matter-of-factly, "I don't care, I'm wearing a plastic coat." She sat down.

A few stops later the person on her other side left the train, and she slid over. By this point I was reading and not paying full attention to the seat anymore, but I had finished the last section of my paper and added that to the adjacent seat for some theoretical extra protection. Soon after that, someone swung into the seat so quickly that I didn't have time to say anything, but then I saw that she was wearing those big-ass headphones and wouldn't have heard me anyway.

She proceeded to get out her Metro, turned to the sudoku, and adjusted her belongings on her lap so she could write, in such a way that her bag was digging into my leg. I made a couple of tentative nudges in her direction to try to get her to adjust, but nothing happened. I sat there and hoped her ass was getting wet from cold coffee.