Shelley and I hopped on a tube the other night, and although one end of the carriage was quite deserted, for some reason we decided to go for two seats down the crowded end.
Even before I sat down I had an uneasy feeling about the size (which was large) of the woman to my right; something told me that by sitting here I would be exhibiting a careless disregard for the rules of The Universe. And yes, The Universe was right (I'm sure I heard some celestial body slap its forehead as I sat down).
No sooner had I sat down than I realised I was sitting on the woman's thigh, and not just a bit of her thigh, but a lot of her thigh, which had laid claim to nigh-on a third of my seat. An involuntary, "Oh" escaped me as I computed my predicament. I couldn't just jump up and say, Let's move to another seat, because that would be tantamount to saying, My goodness you are big, aren't you! I just didn't realise how big before I sat down, which The Universe (and by this stage I was listening) told me would never do.
So I sat. And I sat some more. And I pretended to be interested in the advertising placard on the wall, which advocated vitamins for middle-aged people. All the while, these words sped though my head to the tune of that baseball organ theme: thigh, thigh, thigh, thigh; thigh, thigh, thigh, thigh; thigh, thigh, thigh, thigh; thigh, thigh, thigh, thigh - I'm sitting on a thigh!
Enough! If it was this thigh's manifest destiny to have my seat, then so be it, I would happily be pushed to the margins.
"Oh, there are some other seats," I said, and we left.
I guess the answer was don't sit there in the first place.
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3 comments:
I'd comment only I can't stop laughing out loud. JL
Dear Jules. For the sake of me maintaining and full complement of three brothers, please don't ever ever try this in the New York subways.
of course that should have been "a full complement", not "and"
but I was distracted by the thigh of unusual size
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