Next Stop: 7th Circle of Hell. Stand Clear of the Closing Doors.

It’d be hypocritical for me to say that look down on all subway eating.  I’ve been known to enjoy a granola bar or banana in transit every now and then (wrappers and peels, of course, come with me until I find a trash can).

But the recent offenses that I’ve witnessed lately are entirely inexcusable.

Exhibit A:   A curvaceous woman eating – nay – sucking on BBQ chicken wings.  With dipping sauce.  Her D-cup boobs dangled out of a one-piece jumpsuit halter-top meant for Bs at the very most.  The smell was overwhelmingly nauseating.  There is one place for the smell of BBQ wings, and that is at a bar.  A mile underground on a closed subway car is absolutely inappropriate.  And the slurping suckle as she ingested every last ounce of flesh and sauce from the bone is not a sound that will soon be forgotten, most tragically.

Exhibit B:  Subway cars are subway cars.  Nail salons are nail salons.  Just as you would never enter a manicurist’s hoping it would take you to Coney Island, similarly, you should never enter a subway with the intent of trimming your nails.  This is the most heinous of subway offenses, the one punishable, if you ask me, by public flogging at least.  I’ve found that the East Broadway crowd on the F train is the most common perpetrator, if you know what I mean (lest this blog be considered ethnically insensitive).  Nails on a chalk-board is as tranquil as waves on a beach compared to the blood-curdling CLIP CLIP CLIP of these deranged riders.  At least twice, I’ve had to move myself to the other end of a subway car, or switch cars altogether, to avoid losing my lunch due to the horrendous noise.

Exhibit C:  The loud and foul-mouthed butch who sat next to me on the subway yesterday, sucking the sunflower seeds dry before spit-spit-spitting them out – ptooey! ptooey! – onto the floor of the subway car.  If she were a big fat Israeli man, and we were in Tel Aviv, I would have less of a case, since I would obviously be the only person not sucking and spitting sunflower seeds.  But we were on the A train, and her sunflower discards were coming awfully close to my sandaled feet.  And – again – the noise, the horrible noise!  Sucking through her teeth when she wasn’t busy cursing the fact that she would have to walk to her destination if she chose to smoke a cigarette.  She put an unlit cigarette into her mouth before the train pulled into the station; but that didn’t stop her from pulling those godforsaken sunflower seeds out of her hoodie pocket and popping them in, then popping them out.   I got home and needed to shower.

If I were Dante,  chicken-wing slut would share a cirlce of hell with the a-holes that endlessly clip their nails on the subway.  In this level of hell, the nail-clippers would all have chicken claws, no opposable thumbs to operate a nail-trimming device, and the walking Hooters would be trapped in an over-sized t-shirt, forced to munch on nail-clippings, with nary a pot of dipping sauce in sight.  All of this would take place under a shower of sunflower seed shells, being eternally spat out by the sunflower seed bandit, who would be drowning in a pool of BBQ dipping sauce and cigarette smoke.

If only…

A Public Service Announcement from Fear of Syndication

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled program for an important Public Service Announcement.

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Dear Parents,

Do you want to know why your children do not say “Please” and “Thank you”?

It is because you do not say “Please” and “Thank you.”

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You say things like “Gimme one of these and those,” and then you grumble.

Oh, and are you curious why your kid is flunking grammar?   See above.

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You might say that they learned it from watching you.

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It’s up to you, Parents.  The future is in your hands.  It’s not too late (for them).

Sincerely,

Your Polite & Grammatically Correct Neighborhood Watch

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We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.  Up next: Subway Criminals. Stay tuned…