6:47 express

I’m on the earlier train because of that 8 a.m. sales meeting every other Friday. It’s the 6:47 express.

The woman sitting across from me is familiar. Her hair is short and extremely unflattering. She just picked her nose and then looked around to see if anyone caught her. I didn’t catch what she did with whatever she extracted and it worries me some.

Her lips are orange and sharp. She looks mean, like she’d pinch a small child (then pick her nose I'm guessing) when no one is looking.

She gets on, sits down, breaks out her paperback book and breakfast bar. It’s her routine. I’ve seen her do it a half dozen times before. She wraps those bright orange lips around the chocolaty little health bar and it looks vaguely obscene.

She’s wearing six rings. Three per hand, one on every finger except the Mr. Pointers. They’re not great rings, but they all seem to match what she’s wearing today. I imagine she has hundreds of these cheap-looking rings at home – in every color of the rainbow – for every outfit she has.

She appears to be an office manager or HR director. She’s got that “I’m just looking for a reason to be a bitch today” look about her.

I hate hate hate the fact that I’ve applied all these labels to her based on appearances alone.

It’s not fair.
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The Indian woman sitting next to her took a call at 6:59, just two minutes after boarding the train at the stop after mine. She gets extra Idiot Points for staring at her phone no less than four highly irritating rings before finally answering it.

Who gets a call this early in the morning? Who needs to talk this much before going to work?

Then I think maybe she's talking to her Mom like I do every morning. She’s animated but not too loud and I am grateful.
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“This isn’t me, really, all this train socializing,” I say to my good friend and fellow commuter Susan earlier this week.

I tell her that I’ve never been a classically outgoing person – and I always, always keep to myself on planes and trains.

“I know,” she says. “I used to watch you, sitting there with your laptop. I thought you were a stuck up bitch with your nose in the air. But then I saw how you’d smile and talk with Richard, so I knew you couldn’t be all bad.”
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The Indian phone yapper is finally off the phone but is now talking animatedly to the other Indian lady sitting next to her, who somehow looks bored and desperate all at once. She's anxiously rubbing the iPod in her hand - a none-too-subtle signal to everyone except the oblivious woman who now appears to be chewing her ears off.
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It’s happened many times: New friends say that before they got to know me they thought I was a stuck up bitch.

It makes me wonder what I’m projecting out to the world. Does being quiet automatically mean you’re mean? Does cautious and reserved always translate to aloof and arrogant?

So maybe that mean-looking woman across from me isn’t so bad after all. Now she’s chewing gum like a machine, as if her life depended on getting it right.

Maybe she’s like me, just quiet in situations where she doesn’t really know anyone.

But she didn’t even acknowledge the conductor as he passed through. So who knows.
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I am listening to: The train whistle blowing a lot for some reason
I am reading: Case studies
And I am: Nauseous