I Was Mid-Acquiescence

Riding up on to the fifth ring road.  It’s like a bit further as a way home but its faster, surely.  I’ve been very lucky with the traffic so far.  In one minute, it will turn five o’clock in the evening.  It’s not quite rush hour.  But it’s getting there.

The train back up from Jinan.  I usually don’t want to hear it when someone asks me to take a different seat.  “Sorry, yeah, thanks, I’ll take my seat.  The one that's on the ticket.”  But when I hopped on the train in Jinan the guy in my seat was seated next to his wife.  “Hey” he said, in Chinese “would you mind if I remained next to my wife?”  It was a good opening line.  I looked at him and I looked at his wife.  I imagined the awkwardness of forcing him out so I could plop down next to his gal and began to capitulate. 

This was a mistake, for as I turned to see where it was I would sit there were two people sitting there, a woman and a little girl, aged three or so.  I turned back to the guy in my seat and said: “What about the child?”   He gestured back and the woman took the child now, from the seat that that was being offered to me and put the little girl on her lap.  If I’d known this from the outset I’d have easily been able to dismiss this a something that just wasn’t in my interest.  But by now I was mid-acquiescence.

Deciding against making a scene, involving a wife and a mother and small child . . . I sighed and took the seat.  I was offered some thanks for my gesture and he flopped back down where he’d been.  I nodded to my new seat mates and pulled out my laps top and my phone, which was, of course, moments away from dying of energy loss. 

My new neighbor however was not nearly out of power.  Instead, mom decided to tee-up a cartoon and play it for the lass.  Well, that’s gonna suck.  I considered my own headset and my nearly dead phone.  I considered offering the earphones over to the little girl show she could crank this sappy nonsense and I wouldn’t be bothered, but I suspected most moms would think twice about taking my ear-waxed buds and putting them in junior’s ears.  The girl was kicking my leg, gently but annoyingly at this point.  I turned, and asked mom if she wouldn’t mind turning the cartoon down a bit, which she did.

It’s only ninety minutes.  It’s only ninety minutes.  By now it’s only eighty minutes.  I kept repeating this like a mantra and tried to be productive and civil.  Over to my left I considered the guy in “my” seat and his wife, whom I now hated.  Their glance never once strayed to the right, which was all for the best.

Wednesday 9/12/18