Does It Take One to Know One? I Hope Not, For My Sake

The nice thing about completely crazy people who ride the New York City subway is that they say aloud the things I am thinking but do not actually say since I am not completely crazy.  This occurred to me on last night’s commute home when a mentally disturbed, but harmless, woman got on the train one stop after I did and sat down across from me.  She immediately began ranting about Bloomingdale’s and how it was evil and “shoves it to you.”  I totally agree with the sentiment.  I fucking hate that store.  Every time I go there I am ignored by the sales people and if I ask for help, I am treated rudely.  I assume it is because I am an average slob who definitely looks like I don’t belong there and won’t spend a lot of money on stupid designed crap (true), but my husband is a very respectable-looking guy who does look like he would spend a lot of money on nice things there, and for some reason, he also is treated like crap by staff there, so go figure.  Once I was there and buying a $98 pair of Liz Claiborne pants, a $60 blue merino wool cardigan (which I subsequently lost at the dry cleaners because I am a dumb fuck and didn’t give it to them separately from the matching shell, so they only checked it in as one piece and that is exactly what I got back, which sucked because it was an awesome sweater), and a matching merino wool shell, which I think was $45.  I only got all this shit because I had a gift certificate for $250 which someone gave us for a wedding gift, but people at Bloomingdale’s are assholes and refused to sell us any electronics that we actually wanted, so my husband said I should use it on myself.  (He’s the best!)  Anyhoo, the woman who checked me out was so super nice and friendly, I became suspicious that she was not really an employee.  Turns out she was new and hadn’t finished her training on how to become a haughty motherfucker yet.

Back to the crazy woman on the subway last night… As she was bellowing about Bloomingdale’s, the guy sitting next to me started laughing at her.  She stopped for a second to eye him over.  He was sitting the way that annoying men do where they have their legs spread out all over the place and take up more than one seat.  “What?” the crazy-but-wise woman said.  “Are your balls so big that they take up seats for five people?”  Ka-ching!  That is so one of my pet peeves, and she so nailed him!  I always want to call people out on it but since I am not crazy, I keep my mouth shut in fear of an unpleasant response involving a fist.  I was surprised that the guy turned bright red and actually sat up a bit.  Turns out that there really wasn’t enough room for another person next to him, though, so he began slouching and spreading again.  Still, I found the public shaming was quite effective.  The woman did too and noted that it wasn’t his fault that the “seats are made in Japan, and Japanese people’s asses are smaller than ours, but they think we are asses.”  Interesting point, I thought.

While I was hoping that she would not try and strike up a conversation with me as she watched me write down everything she was saying, I did have a newfound respect for completely crazy people on the subway.