Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Metro Manners

I was on the metro on my way to an appointment when, at one of the stops, a middle aged woman yelled to let her get on. I guess people near the door weren’t moving out of her way fast enough. She passed two empty fold-down seats, nudged a lady on the shoulder and told the lady to let her sit down. She said she wasn’t well, she was handicapped.

The lady gave up her seat without a word and went to one of the empty fold-down seats, while the rest of us stared. The handicapped lady kept coughing loudly without making any attempt to cover her mouth. She asked the young man sitting next to her for the time and then argued with him about what time he had said (she thought he gave a time 15 minutes later than he actually did).


Her supposed handicap was not evident, at least I couldn’t see anything physically wrong with her. Perhaps it was mental. But handicap or not, shouldn’t some “basic” manners be commonplace? How much effort does it take to politely ask someone for her seat rather than commanding her to give it up? Or how about sitting in an empty seat?

7 comments:

David in Setouchi said...

This is a handicap we call "being crazy"...
A pretty common one in Paris you may have noticed, especially in the metro.

elsa said...

Some people have such a low behaviour... It's sad and annoying too!

islandgirl4ever2 said...

Not necessarily... She "might" have been autistic... Some people with autism don't "look" disabled... I worked with special needs kids in the public schools for 7 years in San Diego... and a lot of my high school students didn't "look" disabled in a physical way... Most of them had several physical impairments but half of them were mentally retarded--- great kids, though.. I had some with some SEVERE inappropriate social behavior-- You would be shocked!!!

Anyhow... maybe she was mentally disabled not physically... but not necessarily "crazy" just with really inappropriate social behaviors...
Maybe she was just rude and old (senile) and not disabled at all!!!
I know that inappro. behaviour is really shocking and can throw you off.. I'm kinda used to it after seeing soooo much of it for so many years!!!

1001 Petals said...

She sounds pretty crazy to me!

A (Parisian) Seattleite back in Seattle said...

Crazy, autistic, disabled in some other way - whatever she is, I hope I don't have her on my metro again.

islandgirl4ever2 said...

God... I only WISH your were with me about a month ago when a very LOUDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD woman started talking to "herself" on the metro I was on... I thought she was talking to the little old guy who I
thought was with her but when we all got off at the next stop... She was still talking outloud--- VERY LOUD and the old man kept on walking along... Oh well.. Same kinda thing.. I thought to myself... MAN, is this lady NUTS!!!!!!!!!

David in Setouchi said...

For some reason Paris seem to be attracting all the crazies of France.

That or Paris makes people crazy...

(I lean towards the second option more and more)