A bag on a train

October 16, 2009

I often wonder where human decency has gone…drifted away, it seems, on a sea of righteous indignation. I try and make a point of analyzing and correcting my own behavior, the annoying habits I do that alienate my fellow (wo)man. My unhappiness about the dwindling supply of decency is compounded by the fact that it appears only I try to improve myself. Of course, this isn’t the case…it just seems that way when my emotions are racing.

There was a bag on the train this morning: lonely, overlapping a pair of seats. My husband and I had upgraded our tickets from Coach to Business Class in the hopes that leg room would be augmented. We hadn’t considered the human tendency to occupy two seats even when traveling alone. We meandered up and down the rows of the sole upgraded car looking for two seats together, finally deciding that we would have to sit across the aisle from each other and be satisfied. Row after row, people squeezed their bodies up against the train’s grimy windows as if fearing to catch Swine Flu from us. Their various carry-on parcels adorned neighboring seats.

I was just about to ask one stranger if she wouldn’t mind lifting her luggage from the aisle seat beside her when I spotted a pair of adjoining seats burdened only by a nondescript black bag. The only noticeable features about this parcel were that it bore a blue sticker stamped “CREW,” and it was not obviously connected to a warm body.

I thought of all the reasons for the bag to be there: somebody, a crewman, was saving his or her own seat for a return trip; the conductor, in haste, had dropped his or her luggage on the way to work, etc. I’m not terribly suspicious: I didn’t think about terrorism on Amtrak from Newark to Richmond. Why would Osama Bin Laden want to kill me on a visit to my younger brother, a hardworking college graduate who had just accepted his first “real” job at a non-profit institution where he saves lives and teaches little children to swim? He’s a good person. So am I. So is my husband. We’re liberal Americans. We want everyone to have healthcare, marriage, religious freedom, et. al. EVERYONE.

And we want everybody on the train to have a seat adjoining their loving spouse. We want everyone in a pair to be able to exchange encouraging caresses and anecdotes on their trips. This person, the bag owner, probably dropped his or her luggage and ran off to the bathroom, the café car or employment. It’s okay, I told myself. I’ll just move the bag onto the luggage rack next to the seat and we can sit down. Later, if someone comes back and intends to sit in this seat, I’ll relinquish it. After all, it’s “first come first serve.”

Or is it “finders keepers, losers weepers?” Which expression fits the situation best? Who gets to decide?

Certainly, a couple on a train cannot be expected to sit apart when they’ve upgraded their tickets and found a booth otherwise intended for a plain black bag.

I sat. I set about organizing my work station: six hours of uninterrupted blogging time awaited me. I have many topics and no time to write about them. Today, it’s the fatty, fat, fat supermodel fired for violating her contract with a major clothing designer for being, well, fat: 5’10” and 120 pounds. The nerve! I should be writing about that! How can anyone be contractually obligated to an unhealthy weight? According to Weight Watchers – the cult of self-modification to which I belong, she should weigh a minimum of 139 pounds at that height. Boy, did I have a lot to say on this subject!

However, the moment I began to type, I was unceremoniously interrupted by a large man in a blue uniform. “There was a bag here,” he announced.

My husband scrambled at my left elbow. “Yes,” he or I replied apologetically. “Were you sitting here?” We gestured toward the bag resting three feet away.

The man glared down at us. “See, now, you shouldn’t have done that. You can’t move people’s bags. If I moved…we can’t even do that,” he ranted.

“I’m sorry but there were no seats together. We’re on the train for six hours and we’d like to sit…” I interjected politely. (I was very careful to keep calm at first.)

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. There are seats. I come in here every day and I set my bag down right here. This is where it goes.”

“Do you mean that you’re not going to sit here, you just want to put your bag here?”

“That’s right.”

My husband could see that this was not sitting well with me – on principle. It’s always about the principle with me. After all, I had vowed to myself that my bottom, not being superior to anybody else’s bottom, would not take the seat of another. If he were going to sit in that exact seat, I was prepared to move to another and sit apart from my husband. My principle of self-improvement and basic humanity dictates that everyone is entitled to that seat: male, female, black, white, Jewish, Hindu, etc. EVERYONE.

Apparently, for this conductor, his “everyone” was everyone but paying customers. My husband, who had stood up in preparation to move, leaned down and whispered that it wasn’t worth getting upset over. “But I paid to upgrade my ticket, and we bought our tickets at the same time to sit together, and we are on the train for six hours…” I stated, loudly, in protest.

The conductor announced that he didn’t care. “I will not be treated like this,” he added.

“You won’t be treated like this?” I asked, yelling – oh, hell, I was practically screeching at that point and the tears of injustice had begun to well up in my lower eyelids. “You are kicking us out of a seat so your bag can sit here. I’m a paying customer. You can’t treat me like this! What are you, 8 years old?”

“No, I’m 9.”

At that point he turned his back to me and muttered something about how we could file a complaint with Amtrak through him. “Who is your supervisor?” I asked.

“Me.”

Oh, I couldn’t hold back. He was telling me, essentially, that my person – who had paid roughly $200 – was less important than his bag, which had paid nothing. He was rude and abrupt. And he had turned his back on me. “You’re an asshole!” I yelled with my face scrunched up like a 10-year-old’s. (For, if he’s 9, then I must be at least 10. I was right: just and correct.)

“Yes, and I’m going to be that for the rest of the trip,” he said, whipping around. “You can move or the next stop will be your last.”

My husband pleaded with me to move. My face was red. The tears were coming, and coming fast. And I still had to save my blog’s witty first sentence and turn off my laptop. I did so, begrudgingly, and moved down the corridor. After my dramatic exodus, the conductor lifted his bag back onto the seat and walked to the front of the car to collect tickets.

A very pleasant lady offered me her seat so that my husband could sit beside me. I thanked her through my tears. “Don’t give him any more of your tears,” she whispered gently, brushing my shoulder with a soft hand. This reassured me that others agreed our conductor was a despot in the same league as a Nazi soldier with a gun; he didn’t carry a gun but I suppose his hole-punch, blue uniform and cap provided him with supreme Amtrak Business Class train authority.

On his way past us, he collected our tickets and observed my blubbering hysterics. “Are we having a bad moment?” he quipped.

That was it! “I’ll have you fired, Dickwad!” I screamed. And as I partially stood and turned to make sure my message was delivered with brutal sonic force, I saw his lonely bag on a lonely chair.

I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt. If I’d learned anything working as a journalist, I’d learned that everyone – however modest or placid on the surface – has a story to tell, and an interesting one at that. EVERYONE. I had potentially undermined his: he might be a lonely man in a blue uniform and his bag may represent his solitary state, permanently installed with importance on “his” regular chair. It is quite possible that I overreacted demanding that others live by the principles I hold dear. The passengers got a fiery display of righteous indignation from both sides of the bag, so to speak. Either that, or my hysteria had ruined for them what was to be a relaxing vacation like mine.

There will in fact be plenty of days for feminist rants about too thin models and actresses and the corporations that exploit them. (Knock wood.) But today is the day that, on principle, I must continue to analyze and correct my behavior. I must remember my husband and his acceptance of the things we can’t change. I must remember the woman who graciously gave up her seat to console me. I must remember the bag on a train and what it represents: it has two sides just like every other story.