Only inertia and willful loneliness bind one Adelaide commuter to another.
Speech of any sort – apart from “sorry” – breaches that mind-forged barricade each passenger spends the trip constructing.
Only in the city-town of Adelaide, its citizens wedged in a crevasse between everyone-knows-everyone and everyone-knows-no-one, can public social interaction be so pervasively rejected.
There is safety in the number, one; more safety can be purchased in sunglasses, in screens, in earphones.
To every individual, the way is shut.
By a long way, the most verbose person on this train ..is the train.
“Stand clear; doors closing,” chimes the pre-recorded voice.
The driver was allowed to tell you which stop you were arriving at, once.
They put a stop to that.
It was very inappropriate.
Of the 106 seats on this train, there are 24 faced towards each other in rows of three.
You might like
How ludicrous.
The most prized seat is next to no-one, in the corner, or at the front, or at the back; as long as you don’t have to look at any of the clumsy units swaying about you.
When a backpack claims a seat, the compassionate secretly envy the rude their gall.
Their compensation is zealous internal outrage, unexpressed.
They can pat themselves on the back for feeling it.
If you have the misfortune of finding yourself in one of ‘social’ seats, you’d better bring protection.
Have a book to shackle your eyes to. Better yet, have a screen.
You can’t get to the end of that.
Forget these and the protocol becomes:
Look ‘casual’ (1).
Tether your sight to some window or sign, or a blank wall (2)…
If, by dual incompetence, your eyes meet those of the alien in front of you, don’t worry.
Your eyeballs will do the fleeing for you.
Suddenly, an exile has come aboard. Persona non grata.
He is drunk and poorly dressed.
“CARN THE MAGPIES!!” he snarls.
Stay informed, daily
He replaces the bottle in his pants and the image is complete.
“Fuckin’, WHO’S WITH ME?!”
Of course, no one is with him. Or with anyone else.
“OI! WHO’S FUCKIN’ WITH ME?!!”
The bravest afford themselves a tiny smirk, leaving eyes on-phone, their ears plugged, but turning the volume to nil.
What if he became violent?
There could be heroics!
The drunken man repeats himself, but after a few minutes, gives up, choosing a victim nearby of whom to inquire.
“Whaddya reckon mate? Whaddya reckon?”
Long before this, the smirking few have returned to their former occupations, bored.
The victim knows what to do – offer mono-syllabic responses to this madman and wait for relief. Quell the minor threat of violence and the major threat of embarrassment.
Fences and fences whirl past outside.
At the front of the train, a woman scans the tags on the reinforced plastic wall and the reinforced glass.
Pausing for a moment, a silly, fleeting thought arrives in her head.
Maybe I’ll just introduce myself to someone and see what happens…
“Next stop Adelaide. Train terminates here.”
She’s distracted and her eyes wander again.
Words on the bolted double door read: Conversation with the driver is prohibited.
No such affectation is needed for the passenger: it’s a self-enforced system.
And it’s a good thing too.
It’s for your own safety, you know.
Want to see more stories from InDailySA in your Google search results?
- Click here to set InDailySA as a preferred source.
- Tick the box next to "InDailySA". That's it.
