I was told recently that I tend to notice a lot of superficial things about people, and feel free to talk about them. I tend to disagree, actually, I just tend to notice a lot of things about people, and some of them, people feel are superficial. Others, people feel I’m just conjecturing, as there’s no way I could know those things. Of course, there is no way I could know some things about people; there’s no way to really know how someone is feeling, or what they’re thinking, unless you’re them. But believe it or not, I don’t like getting into semantic arguments with people1, so if I look at someone, or hear someone say something, and say aloud that that person is happy, or sad, or whatever, and then someone counters with “there’s no way you could possibly know that,” I simply agree that there isn’t, and let it drop.
Somewhere along the way a lot of the people I know are incapable of having conversations about things where the people in the conversation have different opinions. Either they start fighting with you, think you are fighting with them, or if a third party, confuse the whole thing with fighting. As a result, I feel sometimes conversation stagnate, as you can only talk about things you both agree on, or have conversations where one person asks questions of another. It’s odd, and I feel it’s hurt my own conversational skills, which I used to pride myself on.2
Anyways, as I kind of got off on a tangent there, over the past couple of days I’ve noticed people on my commute, people who, for different reasons, I felt were interesting, at least to me. So here’s what I’ve noticed about them, starting in reverse chronological order, with this morning:
There’s a girl who, both yesterday and today, is sitting outside on the ferry. She’s the only one out there, as it’s really too cold to be sitting out there, and windy besides (especially on the boat). But you know what? This weekend it was 70 degrees. It’s spring, winter is over, and she’s sitting outside. Even if she freezes her buns off.
Yesterday, I’m getting out of the subway station at work, about to go in and start my day. I see an enormously fat man carrying a number of shopping bags, lumbering his way across the street, having some difficulty. He is grotesquely fat, almost unbelievably so. I’m not a good judge of weight, but I’d guess he was somewhere in-between four and five hundred pounds, and he was shorter than me. I consider seeing if he needs help but, a) I’m on my way to work, b) people who don’t need help doing an annoying task usually get bothered when people offer help, and c) I figured he could honestly use the exercise.
On the train ride in that morning, I’m sitting across from an older lady, perhaps mid-to-late 40’s, not particularly attractive. She starts putting on makeup.
Two seats down from her is a pre-teen girl being accompanied to school by her guardian. This is not the person who usually brings her to school, the person who usually brings her to school is a rather loud homosexual man, who is way too young to be her father. I assume, due to a family resemblance, that this man is either her older brother, or a young uncle. Either way, he seems to be the one taking care of the girl. I assume that the person travelling with the girl today, a huge hulking, bearded, hairy man, who reminds me a bit of Hagrid from the Harry Potter movies, is the partner of the usual guardian, as the man also seems to have a pseudo-parental relationship with the girl, without being old enough to be a parent. I also know this girl goes to school on 12th street. It’s the kind of knowledge you pick up from commuting with the same people every day, nevertheless, I wish I didn’t know it, it seems almost…too intimate a fact for me to know.
They get off at 14th street, along with many other people. The older lady across the way becomes visible for the first time in about ten minutes, and the change the makeup makes is remarkable. She looks about ten years younger, and much less unattractive. The concept of makeup amazes me.
On the way home from work, on the ferry, Joe and I see a group of urban youth, cutting loose and having fun. These youth, from all visual cues, appear to have stepped out of 1991 or so. One of them has a high, Kid and Play-esque flattop, another has an equally high flat-top, with a fade on the sides, plus the flattop comes down in steps, and there are various shapes and patterns carved into his hair. One has Dwayne Wayne flip-shades/glasses, another is dressed like Mushmouth from Fat Albert. I watch for any sign that this is some kind of façade, and see none. I seriously consider following them for a bit, just to see what they’re doing, but unfortunately, I have plans. Also, that would just be creepy of me.
Monday morning, on the train platform on Staten Island, waiting to go to the city, a girl stands near me that doesn’t usually take the train. She is tall, taller than me (at least with her shoes on), and wrapped up tight against the elements that really aren’t bothering anyone else. She’s wearing big tinted sunglasses, and has huge lips that stand out on her general WASP-y appearance. Have you heard of bee-stung lips? These are well beyond that. She looks like she got punched in the mouth, that’s how swollen these things are. I wonder, did she get punched? She’s wearing big sunglasses, perhaps that’s to hide a black eye. Of course, she looks perfectly serene. I chalk it up to likely bad surgery, a la Goldie Hawn.
I realize that those thoughts may read odd, they certainly write that way. But I thought it’d be interesting nonetheless. So there you go.
1. At least, not anymore!
2. Oh, that post on weird things I pride myself on, when will you ever be written?!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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