NTKOG #34: The kind of girl who — like Dudley Do-Right with a nicer chin — constantly waits for opportunities to offer up her subway seat to the old, the infirm, and the really-quite-pregnant.
I am: a total competitive sitter on the T. It’s not even so much the sitting I love as the thrill of, ha!, beating you chumps to the seat!
I am not: likely to ever even glance up, once I’m situated. After all, how can I get through four novels a week if I all be lookin’ around in civic alarm every time I hear the clunk of a cane or the beseeching moan of an arthritic old woman?
The Scene: On the ride home from work several days ago. I have finished my book on the ride in, so am listening to the Hairspray soundtrack and frenziedly glancing about, like a cornered squirrel, for someone upon whom to bestow my coveted lounge. The whole time, I am mentally pep talking myself: “Look at you, dude, being so nice! Yeah, you should do this all the time! It’ll make up for missing all those years of Sunday school! You’re practically Laura friggin’ Ingalls now, you gorgeous-hearted bastard!”
At Park Street, a woman gets on and stands in front of me for a bit. Her skin is a bit pasty and foams up to a few hard-looking pimples, but she has really beautiful bone structure. Her abdomen is eye-level to me and I notice the swell of her belly under a bulky forest green sweater. Pregnant! Time to altruism it up!
I pack up my earbuds and make eye contact with her as we come into the next stop. “Do you want my seat?” I mouth, and she smiles and says, yeah, why not. So when the T stops, I pick up my bag, make room for her to scoot in, then take her former position, standing directly in front of her. There is a strange, uneasy itch in my brain, for some reason.
Pregnant Woman: Wait, you’re not getting off? Why’d you give me your seat?
TKOG: I–
Oh god! She’s wearing five-inch purple stiletto heels. Half of her belly kind of squishes above her jeans, and half below, instead of being a hard, unified mass. There is a pack of cigarettes on her lap. SHE IS NOT PREGNANT. Not a little. Not even at all.
TKOG: –I work in an office and was sitting down all day and was like well I don’t need to sit down anymore so maybe someone else wanted my seat?
I attempt to smile winningly, then look away. The woman is frowning and visibly perturbed. She puts a hand on he belly and starts surreptitiously poking it. At one point she raises her eyes and starts to ask me a question, but I look away. She pokes her stomach a few more times, then, mercifully, gets off two stops later.
Bonus Really Quite TMI Element to the Story: Running parallel to this thrilling tale of my not being a total jackass, another horrifying moment that you might not want to read? At some point over the course of my commute home, it became apparent to me (women’s intuition?) that my period had just started. Like, I mean, on the dang train.
As I offered the girl the seat, I had a momentary blink of paranoia: “Jesus, TKOG, what if you bled through your skirt and there’s blood all over the seat?” and when the girl leaned forward to move something on the seat, I had the horrible realization that she wasn’t pregnant and I had just basically called a girl fat and then potentially offered her a blood-smeared seat on the train we would be sharing for at least half an hour.
Are you there, God? It’s me, TKOG.
Fortunately, when the non-pregnant woman sat fully down, she had a magazine in her lap that she hadn’t been carrying before, so I’m believing (or choosing to believe) that I had been sitting on the magazine and she just saw it and decide to read it. The magazine. That my spontaneously menstruating self had been sitting on for half an hour. …oh. oh god.
The Verdict: As always, the one guiding rule of humanity: if there is any ambiguity, dude, just go ahead and assume people are not pregnant. Although, as terrible as this encounter made me feel, for the days since then, I’ve been mentally primed to glance up and notice people who may want my seat, and have offered it to the elderly and the infirm (forget you, pregnant chicks!). Some have taken it, some have not, and I feel like less of a total jerk from day to day.
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This horrifying bout with Mother Nature (who apparently always wins) submitted for the approval of the hilarious LiLu‘s TMI Thursday. Because what’s the point of smearing bits of your uterus on people if the whole internet can’t enjoy it?
Also, apologies for the lack of a Lorrie Moore story. The signing was Harry Potter Party-packed, and the tiny basement was packed before I could get a seat. (Come on, Brookline Booksmith! I love you, but NOBODY PUTS LORRIE IN A BASEMENT! Still, it was good to see the house packed for literature.)
Not That Kind of Girl 