And so he says to me, you got legs, baby, you're everywhere…you're all over the place! Yeah!

I’m wondering if it is just my imagination that I keep ending up dealing with smelly or otherwise tremendously annoying people on the train. Almost every day, I end up in a booth with one of them. I get to the train fairly early so that I can relax and read and get a good seat. Almost every day, one of them sits in my booth instead of, say, one of the 12 empty booths near me. I seem to have some kind of freak magnetism.

Yesterday I had a fat, smelly, sweaty, coughing, eating guy with headphones turned up loud enough for everyone. He was huffing from the four stairs he had to climb to get on the train, so I had to listen to him breathing for 40 minutes from 6 feet away over the noise of the train. Even worse, his breathing sounded like snoring, but I know he was awake. Every three and a half minutes he would cough – one loud, sharp cough that actually hurt my ears. He ate something that left greasy fingerprints all over the table and crumbs on his messily unshaven face. (Men, if you insist on maintaining the stubble look, keep it neat.) He kept picking up his backpack, rummaging through it, taking out a water bottle, drinking, then putting it away, and then doing it again. He must have done this eight times instead of just leaving the bottle out where he could get it.

This isn’t the first time, either. I seem to get one or two a week, especially on the evening train. I figure that if they can afford the $4.00 trip, they should be able to afford to shower and wash their clothes regularly enough to be inoffensive. There’s a guy on the morning train that never changes his clothes. You can smell him before you see him. He always gets to sit alone. I wonder if that is the intention…

Then there's the total psycho. He sits in one of the end booths with his back to everyone and if anyone coughs or sneezes, he turns around and glares at them repeatedly. After a few times, he starts making comments like, "Knock it off, you're just doing that for attention." He sits and plays with his little beeping watch the whole time, which is really annoying, and he has it set so that the alarm goes off just before the Kent stop. He's always clutching a bag or breifcase-like-thingie to his chest. His glasses are huge and thick and come down to his cheekbones. He reminds me of the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight!

When I am on the train, I do not make any noise, I do not touch anyone, I do not make anyone smell me. I try to be invisible just out of courtesy to others. I know they don’t want to be bothered with me any more than I want to be bothered with them. Are some people so desperate for contact with others that they will annoy strangers just to draw attention to them?

And speaking of drawing the attention of strangers, here I am with a blog… Hello, pot? This is the kettle. You’re black!