There are many irritating people riding the Muni in San Francisco (or any city, I’m sure). Just to name a few, there’s the Subtle Farter, also known as SBD (silent but deadly); Lack of Hygiene Dude; Personal Space Invader; and Vacuous Info-Dump With No Filter Gal.
I was stuck next to an Info Dumper Monday morning on what was a hellishly long ride (it was too windy and raining to do my usual walk from the house to West Portal, so add a half hour to my normal 15 minute commute) in an abnormally crowded Muni because for some unknown reason, they were running single cars instead of doubles during rush hour.
Within five minutes after Little Miss Filterless Double-hinged Tongue got on the car and squeezed right next to my seat, I found out the following information: “I am so sleepy, I so need a cigarette. I took shrooms and was sooo hungry, I”m hungry now, and I want a cigarette. We looked in the mirror, our faces were sooo scary and f-cked up from the shrooms, it was cool. Did you know in Europe you can smoke and it doesn’t matter and it’s great ’cause when you want one you can have one? My dad gave me a hundred bucks to paint a house and I spent it all on gas money to Humboldt. I need to earn some money. I was so high the other night, I had the worst munchies!”
And so on and so forth. All information was liberally interspersed with “like,” which made the stream of consciousness even harder to take and sound more vapid than it already was.
All I wanted to do was read my book in peace and slowly allow my nerve endings, never very happy before eight o’clock in the morning, to sheathe themselves so I could tolerate dealing with the rest of humanity.
Did I mention she had no sense of volume control?
I tried plugging one ear with a finger pressed against it, but her shrill drone cut right through and I ended up with a sore ear. I must have read the same page over a dozen times. I wanted to kill her. Or at least cut out her tongue.
Does this make me a bad person? Maybe. But jeez frickin’ louise, folks, most people really don’t want to hear the minutia of your daily existence and do you really want everyone on a street car to know you’ve been taking shrooms?
There must be a law somewhere, one of those cosmic rules that if the Muni is crowded, you WILL be stuck next to a farter, a stinker, a ‘your space is my space’ or a blabbermouth. I can’t tell you which one annoys me the most.
Oh boy do I know what you mean! My worst case of motor-mouth wants to talk politics all the time–no matter who else is speaking or what happens to be going on at the moment. I like the guy but come on! Bitching about any political situation isn’t going to change a thing. (I’m sure everyone bitched about the way Tiberius ran the empire back in his day. Didn’t bother him one bit. At least until Caligula had him “taken care of”.
Two years ago I was trying to hear author Harry Turtledove (who was holding forth in the Judi Lundy Hospitaility Suite at the time). No thanks to runnaway motor-mouth. I really wanted to commit murder but, like an adult, restrained myself.
Btw, Mr. Turtledove was also aware of his competition and described the offender as sounding “like a rusty saw blade grating against a nail”. Heehee!!!!!
No you are NOT a bad person. You just refuse to tolerate open stupidity.
Keep going lady. We all depend upon you! 🙂
Ooh, even worse, a Motor Mouth you KNOW! I have less patience with those because I feel comfortable enough saying, ‘Dude, enough. My ears are leaking.’ And I really hate it when someone insists on talking politics when I’m not interested. The topic makes my blood pressure go up because people get so heated over it. You’re a strong man, Jack! And yay, Harry Turtledove!!!
*shudder* I feel your pain, both of you.
Sounds like you need to carry a pair of those little foam ear plugs for occasions such as this. And if you get the Subtle Farter, you can stick them in your nose…
Y’know, I had earplugs in my purse too. D’oh!!!! But somehow big pink earplugs in the nose in public… I think I’ll just get a cloved orange on a stick instead. More gentile, y’know…
It’s like that here too. I never ever leave the house without noise-reducing earbuds & my mp3 player because I just can’t handle the chatter.
I also loathe the I’m Immune to My Own Cologne Stench So I Put On Half a Bottle people.
I would love to see a photo of a passenger, wearing big pink earplugs and sniffing a clove!
Ooh, hate those too, Sheina! My sinuses close up around most colognes and perfume…