Now that I’m married and I have a ring to ward off freaks, I feel that riding the Blue Line has become the new opportunity for the crazies to court me. They look for me, see me and then sit practically on my lap. They always smell really bad and sometimes talk to themselves, or to me. Everyone else on the train buries them-self into their Kindles, while I feel 6 feet under. Clearly, I’m on my own…there’s no wing man at my side.

It was a cold winter rush hour and the train was running late. I huddled in the glass box and pressed the “warming” button over and over. Nothing like a blast of heat from a light bulb to save your life. Finally, the choo choo raced in. The doors opened and a wall of people stood in my way. The train was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Somehow, I managed to push and shove my way into my own real estate, but I soon realized that I was standing in a bad neighborhood. The smell hit me hard…clearly the smell of poop. I wondered if someone had a cage full of puppies at their feet and one little dog had an accident. I looked around and didn’t see any pets. As my eyes wandered, I made eye contact with the man who had clearly shit in his pants. He was sitting down on his brown pancake, and his strung-out lady friend sat next to him like a bobblehead dashboard dog.

He looked at me. I looked at him. He sized up me, I sized up him. I started to hum a tune in my head… the other day I saw a shit-pants man, a shit-pants man a-way up there! (Camp songs help me cope during desperate times).

He was on to me. He knew that I knew. I looked back and forth and tried to find a diversion. Quick! Read the advertisement asking if I I’m a drug mule, look at the other one with a pig that begs me to be a vegetarian. This was a great day to forget my Kindle. He was looking right through me.

The train came to a halt at the Kedzie stop and he stood up with his babe under his arm. They walked towards me and the smell was choking. As he came near, he did these subtle kung-fu kicks to loosen up his stool. When he reached the opening doors, he lunged one leg forward and turds came shooting out the bottom of his pant leg!

Some landed on the platform, but a shitball rolled into the corner nearest me. He exited the train and I stared at the poop ball, carefully inching my self further away. No one on the train flinched. They were too wrapped up in other stuff. I felt like shaking them by the shoulders and yelling at them to wake up. What’s this world coming to when people just think riding a train with a shitball is just an average commute?