Just Another Day on Public Transit....

I ride the same tram around the same time to and from work everyday. Lately, I have begun to recognize a few faces and know where they get on at and where they will usually sit when they arrive. For the past few days right around 5:30, as I get on the tram headed out of the city there is one particular lady who creates the same bizarre scene for every one to see.

She will come in and sit down right around the Nicholson and Johnston stop where the tram is still pretty crowded with people, but is also starting to tapper off from the city traffic. She is not dressed in business attire, like most of the people around her, she wears a tight shirt that always has huge sweat marks down the side accompanied by baggy pants of some sort. She will pull out the same motivational book on owning a your own business and will read maybe a page or two before the fun begins.

After about 2 or 3 minutes she starts to look around at the 3 or 4 people standing or sitting closest to her and start sniffing them. She will stick her head all around and smell really loud until people start to stare. She starts to make terrible faces like something stinks and than grab the tattered black scarf out of her handbag and wrap it around her head like a face mask covering her nose. A few stops later when that crowd of people seems to have gotten off the train she removes the scarf and will start the process over again!

Today was my lucky day and she sat down next to me. I knew the minute she got on that the empty seat next to me was about to be taken by the stink freak and I immediately wanted to get up and move, but had nowhere to go. So I sat there and thought well maybe today is a new day and she will just put that shnoze of hers away and none of us will have to suffer through her act this evening.

Wrong! After a few minutes she starts the sniffing routine and I can feel her long dread like braids getting closer and closer to my sweater as she begins to sniff. This time she even goes as far as saying, "What's that smell?!" followed by a few coughs and several more sniffles. The whole time I am thinking "hey freak, I see you do this everyday on the tram - did you ever think that the smell isn't coming from us and that maybe its YOU!?"

Of course I didn't and continued to look out the window and impatiently allow her to continue sniffing me.