Saturday, August 30, 2014

Backwards-thinking

On my train home tonight, a middle-aged man startled from a drunken slumber and hazily looked around in a panic. He spotted me from the corner of his eye and yelled, "YO CONDUCTOR...WHY IS THIS TRAIN GOING BACKWARDS?" I walked over to where he was seated and patiently explained that the train wasn't going backward, he was, in fact, sitting backward. I guess my explanation was too difficult for his pickled brain to grasp, as evidenced by him poking his sleeping wife who was seated next to him and yelling "HONEY THE TRAIN IS GOING BACKWARDS!" His wife was leaning forward with her face plastered to the pleather headrest in front of her. She managed to slowly unpeel it, then rolled her blotchy red face toward me, one eye open, drool running down her chafed chin, then slurring, "Why the train going backwards mister?" I again tried to explain, now pointing, that we weren't going backward, it was just that they were facing opposite the direction of travel. The husband looked at me expressionless, sat silent for a moment, then asked, "Did you pull some kind of trick on us or something?" At this point, I threw my hands up in the air and said, "Yes, yes I did. I'm a very tricky guy." Then I walked away.

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