October 21st, 2009

Games to Play on the TTC: Snark Projection

Regular readers of this blog will know that I spend a lot of time on the TTC and that I love it. It’s not a perfect system (I’m looking at you, big open U up north) but it functions admirably, and for $1200 a year, gets me everywhere I need to go, plus most places I want to go. I also love the openness to strangers and their lives that public transit gives me. When I stopped working in the service industry, I found I really missed the constant stream of new faces (although little else). Some days, the bus is my only chance to see any strangers at all.

The TTC is a fashion show, an easedropper’s paradise, a microcosm of etiquette puzzles (exactly how crowded does the bus have to be to make standing in front of the doors acceptable?), and chance for random acts of kindness. Of course, that last one is especially fun to watch: how many bookmarks, metropasses, gloves, and pieces of fruit have people rescued for me in transit? I see people lifting up the fronts of strollers, grabbing the arms of blind people, offering their streets to pregnant ladies, mentioning that someone’s tag is out almost every day.

But I also see a fair bit of bad behaviour. So, though you know it comes with (largely) love, this particular game is snarky. I have noticed a bad TTC tendancy has lately picked up force, and I don’t like it, and to comfort myself, I have been writing little storylets based on the bad behaviour.

On most of the newer TTC buses (since about 2006), the seats in the raised rear portion of the bus are in pairs beside the windows. I always sit at the back and have firmly internalized the bus-logic rule that if you are alone in a two-seat, you scootch over to the window if you want to zone out. It is permissable to remain in the aisle seat only if you are able to remain alert and immediately swing your knees out into the aisle if someone wants to set next to you (because there is zero leg room for someone to get by; the aisle person essentially blocks access to the internal seat).

BUT! Some people I’ve encountered lately have not only not been scooting over or putting their knees in the aisle as I angle for the seat, they have been meeting my gaze balefully, almost angrily, even when I ask if I might please sit there. They do actually let me–no one’s said no yet–but a lot of people have looked furious about the proceedings.

I don’t think the rules have changed since I moved to TO–but in order to not simply start hating everyone, I have been imagining the interior monologues of these people, trying to empathize with how they must somehow feel wronged by my desire to sit beside them.

Here’s what I’ve got, for only some of the encounters I have had.

1) I am in love! I am in love and texting my beloved! Texting is our bond! If I do not text him immediately, he might not know I love him! Textless, he might break up with me! Then I would be loveless, heartbroken, life would not be worth living. I might die. I see a shadow. There is someone standing over me, but I cannot stop texting “OMG, I <3<3<3 u!!!!!!" to see what this shadow wants. Clearly, it is less important than love. Even if the shadow is in love with me, I am spoken for. Probably. Unless the shadow is super-hot...maybe I should look up? 2) That young woman is clearly young and slender, while I am feeling fat and old today. My friends tell me that I am neither fat nor old but they are lying so that they won’t have to deal with my problems. I’m not going to squinch up in this narrow little molded plastic seat, I’m not going to let her make me feel fat. Alone, my thigh can perhaps inch a bit over the seat divider and no one cares, but if that little gym rat were sitting next to me, she’d shift awkwardly away and make me feel like a big fat cow. No way am I letting her insult me like that. She can stand on her gym-toned legs. 3) That young woman has a big ass. If she sat down next to me, I would have to squinch awkwardly into the aisle to accomodate her ass. After a hard day, I deserve to have full access to my complete molded plastic TTC seat. I am not responsible for her lack of willpower regarding molasses taffy. She should stand–it tones the glutteal muscles. 4) I am in a gang. Gang members get full control of the back seats on busses. How can you not know this, lady in the tights with flowers on them? Clearly, you are not in a gang, but you should still respect the entitlements of gang members. See this enormous cubic zirconium in my left ear? See this silver flip-phone with rhinstone bedazzling? This is bling, flower-lady. Where is your bling? Ok, you have bling, but it is in the form a butterfly broach. Are you in the butterfly gang? No, no you are not, because there is no such thing, and therefore you have no right to any seat in the back row. They are all mine. Go away, and come back when you’ve joined a gang. What do you think–am I close? I know this is sort of game is a poor substitute for accepting that people are a little rude sometimes, but I like my way better. Please, feel free to play along! RR

October 8th, 2009

Random Sad

On my answering machine today:

September 11th, 2009

From the department of WTF

This morning, shortly after sunrise, Rebecca is walking home from the gym. She is passed by an extremely tiny jogger in shiny red spandex shorts. Rebecca is listening to Green Day on her iPod. She is relatively content. Suddenly, she feels a tug around her neck. Slowing her stride, Rebecca examines her iPod wires and hoodie drawstring (both of which she routinely mismanages) to find the source of the problem. The tugging increases. Rebecca stops moving, the tug stops increasing but doesn’t go away. She claws at her neck and finds: a noose!

Ok, ok, technically, it wasn’t a noose because it didn’t pull tight, but it was a loop of cord hanging from the tree above my head!!! More like a garrotte, I suppose.

!!!
!!!
!!!

The jogger missed it because she was too short, but it was exactly the right height for yours truly.

I was so alarmed and dismayed to learn that my neighbours were attempting to assassinate me with Robin-Hood-style tactics that I could not disentangle myself from the cord. Suddenly, a woman got out of a car that had been idling in the driveway I was standing in front of–I’m not sure if she was eager to help, annoyed that her dastardly plan had been foiled, or just wanted to pull out of her driveway! Anyway, she got me out of the cord and then, when I gestured that it could not be left this way (yes, that’s exactly what the gesture indicated) she pulled the whole thing down from the tree (it wasn’t bound all that tight) and promised to throw it away.

With no one to arrest and no actual damage done, I went home, in a state of severe discombobulation. Why would anyone want to kill me?

My only theory is that my state of attractiveness is not very high when I am wandering around post-gym, semi-dawn. Perhaps the neighbours think I am bringing down property values? The aforementioned hoodie in fact predates the term, as it was purchased by my father in the early 1990s at BiWay and given to my brother, who did not want it, which is how I ended up with it. So yeah, not a fashion plate, but hardly a cue for murder?

To recapitulate: WTF?

RR

September 10th, 2009

Things you don’t need to know

1) I took a mini-version of the Myers Briggs test and found out that I am an extremely boring person. I forget what the technical name of the personality type was, and they don’t make precise career recommendations, but the impression that I got was that I should definitely not to do anything creative as a profession, although I would likely be excellent at stacking papers into extremely neat piles.

2) In a similar vein, yesterday I was describing an activity someone had suggested. I said to my auditor, “I guess some people would want to do that, but I really don’t get why.” The response? “Human beings, Rebecca: make a study of them.”

3) Small recompense for being a boring non-human, but at least I continue to mouse lefthanded, and am getting better at it everyday. Still can’t use the drawing palette properly with the left, though.

4) Finally, I came to the astounding realization that, since there is no one among my good friends I would refuse to French kiss for hygienic reasons, being worried about drinking out of someone else’s glass is pretty silly.

Gone gone gone
RR

September 5th, 2009

A good friend

Me: It’s just down one floor, if you want to take a look.

(we descend on escalator, look around)

Me: Oh, no, sorry. I was wrong, it’s actually *up* one floor. Sorry.

P: No worries. At least we got an escalator ride out of it.

Crying crying all of the time
RR

August 28th, 2009

TTC Hand Stories

1) A middle-aged gentleman in a windbreaker in a corporate-branded windbreaker and earbuds sits down in the single seat ahead of me on the streetcar. I am facing forward, the way the seat goes, but he faces sideways, into the aisle. I am always startled by older people with earbuds, because my parents are my reference point for all older people, and they would no more stick appliances in their ears than in their noses. But I am reading, looking out the window, reading, not paying attention to this man…until he begins to take things out of a plastic bag. Then I have to look, in case he’s got a book and I need to read the spine, or a snack and I need to see if it looks appetizing, or…or…*anything interesting at all* (I don’t get out much; I am your streetcar worst nightmare). Whatever it is, there are several, each in an individual cellophane packet. I peer through the cello but can’t really understand what the items are–some sort of crumpled while loops of fabric. I look harder and harder until the man turns to meet my gaze and I turn back to the window, feeling like the giantest weirdo on the TTC for staring with such intensity at the poor man’s craft materials or whatever. I don’t look at him again until we get off the car, when I realize the man is gripping the pole with a hand cloaked in a thin tight white glove. His other hand is bare–yes, I looked–I don’t know what he did with the other gloves. He gets off without looking at me again, earbuds and windbreaker and Michael-Jackson glove. Another thing my parents would never do.

2) A beautiful young woman in a sleek black business suit sits on the Yonge line southbound, eating a bag of Cheetos. Look closer: it’s not *quite* a business suit. The blazer’s got a zipper that goes up to the throat, and her high spike heels are on bare feet rubbed popped-blister raw. Look closer: her hair is a tumble of beer-blond curls that have clearly required a heat-styling implement, but now they’ve started to unscrew, some rounder than others, some nearly perfectly vertical. And closer: not quite a young woman; behind her expensive narrow red glasses frames this is a university student with a posh summer job–maybe even a high-schooler. Her knees are knobby and crossed wide. She is eating the Cheetos at a great rate, as if someone will get on at a predetermined stop and take them from her. It is not a single-serving bag. Despite all of the above, as close as you can look, she is still beautiful. She eats the last cheese-twist and, with even more urgency, inserts her frost-pink manicured nails into her mouth, on at a time, and sucks the electric orange dust from the creases before she dares brush them against her cheap black suit. She finishes the tenth nail just as we arrive at Union and, crumpling the bag in her fist, she darts off.

Mutiny, I promise you
RR

August 26th, 2009

Relit Awards Long List

I am a bit behind, as usual, but someone nice just pointed out to me that the Relit Awards Long List were announced last week, and *Once* was included (in the short fiction category, natch). It’s a big list, full of amazing books, and I’m delighted to be included. This news makes up for the rain for sure, and maybe even the ongoing lowlevel rage that left-handed mousing is producing. That one may not have been the best idea I ever had. But on we struggle!

Talking to all my little pets / smoking the same old cigarettes
RR

August 10th, 2009

I’ll always wonder

[RR is at the cashier at 7-11, paying for soda. A young girl enters, carrying pizza slice in paper bag, looking frazzled but cheerful.]

July 6th, 2009

What we talk about when we talk about nothing

D: Aspertame isn’t really bad for you, you know. That’s a myth.

Me: Whew!

A: So how come I get a headache every time I have it?

D: It might be bad for you personally. Some people are allergic to aspertame, but some people are allergic to trees and grass, and I’m unwilling to accept that those are objectively bad things.

J: I’m not so crazy about grass, actually.

Me: I love hearing about what you hate! How can you hate grass?

J: It’s all poky! And full of bugs.

Me: I sat on some nice grass this weekend. It was sort of dying, so it was all limp and soft.

A: Dead grass is the most poky. It’s like straw.

Me: Dying, not dead. It had just gone limp, but it hadn’t dried out yet.

D: It was losing turgor pressure.

Me: Exactly.

J: So that’s the secret–almost dead grass. Huh.

I can’t believe what they’re saying / I can change my mind
RR

June 29th, 2009

Web presence

My audiobook debut edges ever closer–Rattling Books has made me an author page for my contribution to Earlit Shorts 4. And now I know that my partners in audio shorts are Chris Benjamin, Michael Collins, J.J. Steinfeld and Leslie Vryenhoek. I’m stoked!

In other news:

1. I had a lovely weekend and was only outside during the sunny parts.
2. I’m starting to be ok holding babies, although only if a) the parents are present and b) the baby is awesome.
3. Ontario strawberries!!!
4. I’m the least-efficient writer ever.
5. This week has a holiday in the middle of it!
6. Yay, everything (except #4)!

And the girl at the top wearing tulle
RR