Transient Transplant

I was already tired and annoyed when the man sitting across from me on the train decided that belting out a song and dancing in his seat was a good idea in a public space.  It escalated to anger when we were at capacity, all of us commuters shoulder to shoulder and miserably gasping for non-BO smelling air every time the doors to our car opened while he felt his singing was somehow something all of us wanted to hear.

I am fairly good at realizing that I’m irrationally angry, and have learned to just push that anger down until I can vent to the next person I see when it comes to dumb things that annoy me–the list for which is exceptionally long.

But I took it all in stride.  That is until he unraveled part of his turban and blew his nose in it, and I about lost my shit on a crowded train.  I made eye contact with someone who I can only assume has lost a few marbles as he thinks singing in a train car is acceptable.  But to use your headdress as a hanky?

I gave him my best “are you fucking insane” crazy eye, full well knowing that fighting fire with fire was a terrible plan.

I looked at him in horror, wishing he would have used his shameless personality to speaking to the public to ask for a Kleenex instead of now carrying his mucus on top of his noggin.

There’s a plethora of things in Seattle that annoy me, and I wish this was the first time I’ve witnessed someone singing on crowded public transit.  Unfortunately it’s never someone who’s great at carrying a tune.

So the morning after that I decided I must just be worn out of interactions with people and I should likely keep a low profile.

I decided I needed to made a grocery store run, but would just throw my hair up in a ball cap and a pair of jean, that way I was as close to being back in my apartment in sweats as humanly possible when I made it back.  God forbid I take the extra effort to change my top.

I looked in the mirror and realized the baseball cap I was wearing had my last name on it.  It’s the only one I own.

I couldn’t fly under the radar on the off chance I would run into another human I knew.  Which never happens, but would undoubtedly when I didn’t want it to.

I just pictured it:  “I didn’t recognize you looking like such a hot mess, but then I figured who else would wear a hat with Lauck plastered across the front of it except you.”  It was bound to give me away and the goal was to keep a low profile and minimize the human interaction to its lowest possible point so I could recharge.

So I ditched the hat, threw my hair up in a messy bun and made the hike to the grocery store.  “Keep your head down and stay focused,” I told myself.  I was not to get sidetracked.

My goal of remaining incognito was thwarted in less than two minutes when I ran into two abandoned carts blocking the aisle.  I went to move one of them because I’m a lady of action, and quite frankly, don’t abandon your cart should be the number one rule of grocery shopping.

I figured, discreetly move it out of my way and then no one would even know it’s me.

That’s when the owner of one of the carts came around the corner.  I waited for her to move, but instead she leaned on the handle and started reading her phone.

“Can you please get off of your phone and stop blocking the aisle so we can all get through here?”  I asked as now there were two people behind me waiting on her to move.

“Oh I didn’t even see you there.”

“Sounds about right,” I thought to myself, now having created a scene in the store with all eyes on me instead of my initial goal of roaming the store unnoticed.

It’s crazy around here to be the loud mouth.  I’m easily seen as the meanest/bluntest person at my work, yet it seems to be that not a day passes when I go through my Seattle life, trying to fly under the radar, yet somehow it never quite works out that way.

I’m the same girl who earlier this week yelled at the bus to wait and ran after it in heels.  I looked over only to have a homeless woman outrun me and bang on the door to get it to stop for her too, as I gimped on board after her.

The bus driver glared at me, presumably thinking I was homeless too, now sweaty and limping in my pumps, dragging a foot down the aisle til I found a seat.

I suppose some things just aren’t in my nature.  And while I dream of being incognito, I’ve decided that’s hard to accomplish in a city of passivity when you are a hothead 80 year old woman stuck in a 30 year old body.

Perhaps I am more like the singing man on the train than I initially had thought.  Minus wearing my own mucus of course.