Honey, You Deserved that Body Check

It might not have been a full-on NHL body check, but it was pretty good for a crippled chick.

Starting back to work means getting to and from work, which for me, is a commuter train. 

The morning commute is easy ... I am at the top of the line, so the train is there when I get to the station. I just hop on (HA! "hop" .. right), grab a seat and wait for the train to leave.  Arrival downtown is a bit of a madhouse but it's generally okay because the masses of humanity are all moving in the same direction and everyone knows where they're going.  No one doing anything stupid.  It's early in the morning, people are focussed on getting to work or getting their first cup of coffee, and no one is in a maniac-craze to get anywhere in the next 20 seconds.

Home is a different story.  Home involves tourists or other such sundry out on the streets - gazing around at the scenery, confused about where they're going, making sudden stops and interrupting the pedestrian flow.  But the fun of all fun is the train station.

The regulars on my train are orderly folk.  They know where the train is going to arrive, where the doors are going to be, and even though the train hasn't arrived yet, they line up in a nice fashionable paired queue ... one side of the line heading for the upstairs of the car, the other side of the line heading for the downstairs of the car.  They are also courteous enough to allow a gap between the start of the lineups and the edge of the platform so that people can walk to the line up for the car they want.

It starts to get interesting when you are walking the platform when the train pulls in ... you are walking in a meter-wide "aisle" between a mass of humanity and a moving train.  For me, the walk involves the people on my left (aka my "good side" with the cane) and the moving train on my right (aka, my "bad side").   Now generally, people are very good ... they see me coming, they give me space, they wait for me to pass, they walk widely around me.

Not so much yesterday.  Yesterday, a woman (I'll call her that out of politeness) decided to be a social idiot.  She was waiting in line, I was walking with the train moving to my right, and just as I was about to pass her, she looked up, looked at me and stepped out in front of me. Not fully in front totally blocking my path, but enough in front that an able bodied person would have had to sharply veer to avoid hitting her.

I am not able bodied.  And I'll play the cripple card all day long.  I have no regrets about leaning, hard, into her as I passed her. She's lucky I didn't take a swing at her with my cane (hmm ... cause that probably would have been assault).

I didn't look back.  And I might have smiled :)