Riding the Train
By Nancy Salvato (06/12/07)
Standing in the aisle, with about 6 inches between myself and the door to the vestibule from which the Metra Train passengers disembark, I witnessed the most egregious display of self aggrandizement exhibited by another passenger. Had a fellow rider not locked eyes with mine in a mutual observation of the said incident, I don’t think I would have believed it happened as it did. As it happens, this other rider butted in front of me, moving quickly, as if he was late for an appointment in court, and opened the door to the over crowded vestibule where he made his way inside so that he would be able to exit the train from a more advantageous position than the rest of us in line. No one called him on his rude display, but I constructed a complete diatribe about what I wanted to say to him. I wasn’t angry, but I wanted to point out to him that he was the perfect embodiment of what the ancient Greeks would have deemed an idiot.
Idiocy shares with idiom and idiosyncratic the root idios, which means private, separate, self-centered -- selfish. "Idiotic" was in the Greek context a term of reproach. When a person's behavior became idiotic -- concerned myopically with private things and unmindful of common things -- then the person was believed to be like a rudderless ship, without consequence save for the danger it posed to others. This meaning of idiocy achieves its force when contrasted with polit¯es (citizen) or public. Here we have a powerful opposition: the private individual versus the public citizen. Teaching Against Idiocy
What the other passengers and I witnessed isn’t anything new. As a matter of fact, I frequently see this kind of idiocy on display during my commute. For example, there is a garbage can near the vestibule that causes me great anxiety when I’m positioned next to it. This is because I can’t count the number of times other riders literally throw their half drank coffees and newspapers, among other things into the can. In and of itself, that would seem to be a good thing for them to do until you factor in the idea that they don’t drop their garbage into the receptacle, they toss it in from wherever they are standing, with no regard for whoever happens to be standing nearest the garbage bin. There is no forethought about the possibility that something might splash on whoever is nearest the can. There is no forethought about the chance that the waste might miss the can. As a matter of fact, responsibility toward fellow passengers is not taken into consideration at all. I remember, as a teacher, telling my students to walk over to the garbage can and not treat it like a basketball net. Apparently, full grown adults don’t grasp the reason for such a rule, so why would we expect kids who look up to these people as role models to understand and respect such logic.
Other times I’ve found it difficult to find a seat because fellow commuters treat the second half of a seat as their valet for brief cases, and such. I’ve seen passengers flip the seats so they can use the opposite seat as an ottoman for their feet. I’ve witnessed people sleeping on an entire bench. I’ve listened to passengers half way down the car having loud conversations about personal matters and conducting business on their cell phones. I’ve endured the bass of loud walkmans, listened to on earphones. I’ve endured the smell of greasy fried chicken as I stood in the vestibule while another passenger had a snack, all the while pitching the bones across the aisle into the garbage next to me. The worst is very loud cologne; this is especially hard on those with breathing difficulty. I have to ask, who doesn’t appreciate sniffing room freshener that hasn’t yet dissipated into the surrounding environment? I wonder, are the smelling receptors of people’s noses broken from spraying the stuff on their bodies’ everyday? Can smell receptors fail from constant exposure to bad perfume? How about the occasional passing of gas? That’s always pleasant in closed quarters. What about when the two above smells are blended? Okay. . .I’ve painted the picture. . .
I actually like the train. I save on fuel, I don’t have to fill my gas tank nearly as often, and I don’t have to drive. When I drive, I have been known to be a bit vocal about my fellow commuters. I remember when my son was two years old, sitting in the back of the car in his little car seat. One of his first words was id-yit. . .
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