Odd Practices

While we lived in Chicago, Nate and I noticed that people did some strange things. Strange to us, anyway. For example, digging your car out of the snow and then "claiming" the spot with junk. Seemed pretty juvenile to us, but our landlord said that most people respected the "dibs" because people had been shot for taking another individual's spot. On a public street. Crazy, man. That's why I don't do winter. The cold makes people nutty.

Somehow that got Nate and I onto a conversation about the El. One of our friends saw a man defecating on a platform, which I think is pretty much the worst story I heard. Nate and I both had the experience of trying to get on an extremely crowded train, finding a section of a car that was miraculously empty, then seeing the vomit or urine or whatever it was that made people give it some space. On my way to work one day, I sat on a seat that was wet. As I stood up, I prayed someone had just spilled their drink and not lost control of their bladder. I also saw people on the trains putting on makeup (the whole routine, not just lipstick or touching up), plucking eyebrows, and clipping nails. I don't know why, but the nail clipping bothered me the most. I think it was the sound, that insistent metallic clip, clip, clip and the fact that someone was leaving DROPPINGS from his body on a public train. Please don't do that, sir. I don't want to sit on your discarded nails.