All Aboard the Crazy Train

I’m crazy and I’ll eat anything.

I don’t want to drone on and complain about people.  I’m sure others have at one time or another considered me a bit odd and I’m okay with that.  If I call you crazy, I’m usually saying that with fondness. I call my dog, Sophie, “Crazy” (that’s her nickname) because she eats paper, plastic and despite the fact she has a ZILLION toys, my turquoise slipper continues to be one of her favorite chewies.

Anyhoo, I went into the city over the weekend via the train.  I truly try to respect everyone’s space.  I don’t talk loudly on my cell phone, I am polite and try to make the ride as pleasant as possible.  Why doesn’t everyone play nice?  Why, why, why?

“Scott is not the kind of guy ya wanna mess around with I told Christina….blah, blah, blah.”

Two young ladies sat across the aisle from me.

Despite the fact that there were SO MANY other seats in which they could have chosen to have their NONSTOP LOUD CONVERSATION.  Are they crazy or did they just want to goad me and if so, why?  They didn’t know me.

Also, I noted on the way in and back there were these official-looking women on the train that wore vests with reflective strips on them.  They also had a small backpack and carried a note pad.  I have no idea if this is some kind of new procedure on the LIRR or what, but on the way in, the lady sat quietly and made a few notes on her pad.  But the lady on the way back home, well, not so much.

I GOTTA DANCE, BABY.

She stood for more than few stops at the entrance door to where the train guy sits with her back to me.  I was sitting in a nice, quiet space (before the aforementioned non-stop talking girls showed up).  She was plugged into an iPod and the music was so loud, I could hear the tinny little thump, bump sounds coming out of it — constantly.  Then she began to dance and not just a little sway back and forth, a bump and grind, gettin’ it kind of way, complete with singing a few words aloud — LOUDLY.  It annoyed me because I was trying to read — was she crazy or just uninhibited?

I witness this same thing in the gym, restaurants and on the street.  People either talking loudly to someone on a cell phone about personal things (they look insane most of the time because they’ve got that Bluetooth thing in their ear) or they’re plugged into music and they sing LOUDLY with no regard for anyone else around. Once a woman on a treadmill was singing so loudly I seriously thought I was on Candid Camera or that What Would You Do show.  No one else was giving her any looks, so I guess it is me.

Maybe they’re just free-spirited and “possessed by enthusiasm or excitement” (one definition of crazy) and I’m the crazy one.  Or, maybe I was just a big grump that day.

“To them she is not a brusque crazy, but ‘appropriately passionate” – Mary McGrory