Monday

If you walk through this:


You have no business doing this:


The title says it all. Imma warn you now, this post is long. You may want to grab a coffee, take a break, etc.

I made the mistake of taking the 401 this morning when I should have known better that the weather would cause traffic to be slow. I missed the 753 Osh - Union by a minute.

I hopped on the 825 which is not as full of a train as the one before it which means lots of empty seats. This also resulted in people, with wet shoes and dirty boots, spreading themselves out, along with wet umbrellas on seats! Many were grinding their wet shoes into the fabric off the seat in front of them and I'll get to that in a minute.

Why is this wrong? Because I know there are plenty of you who see nothing wrong with this rude behaviour. The train hasn't made all stops yet. This means some poor soul gets to sit in others' wet and filth once they take their feet down or slide their umbrella under a seat.

At Oshawa, a whole gaggle of college girls got on my coach and their wet shoes, jackets, back packs and umbrellas were tossed onto all the seats around them. This pissed me off. Especially the one girl grinding her UGG boots, still dripping, into the fabric of the seat in front of her.

We still had 10 minutes until departure. I asked her politely not to do that. She looked at her friends and they all laughed and ignored me while increasing the volume of their conversation. Oh, I see... It's like *that* is it?

I made sure to stare directly at her. Finally, she asked me if I had a problem. These young girls today, such short memory spans. I said nothing. I got up and walked down to see the CSA who I swear to God, reminded me of Santa. He was so polite when I told him my beef and just like Santa, he got a twinkle in his eye and pulled out the microphone (which isn't really micro but is a phone) and made a long, scathing announcement about how it doesn't matter the season, that riders must not put their feet on the seats as it's disrespectful to other riders. I really wished he had said Santa is watching, but he didn't. Ridiculous that grown adults have to be TOLD!

So I walk all the way back to the coach I was on and made a big production, using a lot of swagger, as I walked past the group of girls, who, mainly because of the people who were about to board at Whitby, had their feet down (or it was the announcement, but I doubt that).

I took it a step further and told people coming up the stairs, "You may not want to sit here as these seats are wet from people who had their shoes and umbrellas on the seat. I don't have a towel handy or else I'd lend you one".

The ringleader of these girls turned a nice shade of red. I don't think anyone's put her in her place before, definitely not her parents. Now I didn't single her out by saying it was her but she knew who I meant. I'm not her mother and in the real world, there are consequences for rude behaviour.

A lot of people text me and email me asking why I give a crap about foot riders. Maybe it's because I lived another life in some bygone era but I was raised in a household where my parents took great pains in teaching me and my sisters how to behave in public and we wound up with a great deal of self discipline and next to zero self-entitlement. Do unto others and all that jazz.

To this day, my mother derives great pride from anyone who mentions to her what respectful and kind daughters she has. It's a testament to her iron fist. Trust me, it wasn't fun but my mom wasn't a mother for the sake of being someone's friend. Her job was to make sure we were brought up right.

Sigh. All I want is for people to be respectful of those around them. This includes not only the foot riders but the loud and overly boisterous cellphone talkers who project their conversations because they think others find their life interesting. If you're one of these people, trust me, this is not the case. Texting is just as efficient and if it's not possible, I'm sure your conversation can be condensed to under two minutes. Learn how to summarize... m'kay?

It took 20 minutes longer than it should have to write out this post because some guy who got on at Ajax decided to have a long, loud conversation about flyers and sell sheets that were only in draft, but some co-worker thought they were final and wrote some rude email saying they all had to be re-printed, so he was gonna write an email to embarrass her, but only psychologically.

See? I shouldn't know any of this but I do. I want to focus on my thoughts, not yours!