Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Witness

I’ve heard stories about this happening on the bus or Metro before, but I have never seen it in person…until yesterday. As I was sitting on the bus reading the fourth Harry Potter book, the woman next to me pulled out clippers and started cutting her finger nails. To make things worse, she left the cut nails on the floor of the bus. There are many problems with this entire scenario, but let’s just go with the most obvious. Who cuts their finger nails in a public place, especially on public transportation? This is something that needs to be done in private. While I admit to having poor grooming habits regarding my finger nails (that’s a nice way of saying that I bite my finger nails), at least I do this in private.

So now I need to figure out a nickname for the finger nail woman. I may have mentioned this before, but I sometimes entertain myself on my commute by coming up with nicknames for people who frequently ride the bus with me. This would include Sideburn Guy, Smoking Man, Crazy Lady Who Isn’t Crazy, The Woman Who Doesn’t Shut Up, Weasley (the guy has red hair and would fit in perfectly in the Weasley family from Harry Potter, except without that magic thing), and Disheveled Mike, who looks like a colleague of mine, except my colleague is always well-dressed and neat, and the guy on the bus is, well, not. Maybe I’ll just call her Rude Finger Nail Lady.

I never claimed to have original nicknames.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was on a cross country flight when a women pulled out a bottle of nail polish and actually painted her nails. The smell filled the cabin for the entire flight.

How about Miss Cut-icle?

Sean said...

Miss Cut-icle is pretty good.

I think painting your nails on an airplane is worse than cutting your nails on a bus. The smell of nail polish is awful, especially when you can't open your window.

Andy said...

In a similar manner, Lisa and I have come up with nicknames for all the regular personalities we see at the gym: Sweaty Bike Guy, The Grunter, The Benchwarmer, Frat Boy Doofus, and Elliptigirl. It keeps us entertained.

Nick said...

The one thing that Chicago has that DC thankfully doesn't have is people who eat sunflower seeds on public transportation and spit the seeds onto the floor...I've never been more thankful for a food-and-drink ban.

I was on the Metro last week and the woman next to me pulled out a bottle of nail polish and started painting her nails. I got up, moved to the other side of the car, and she gave me the evil eye. So ignorant!

Anonymous said...

Once I was in an airport and a guy was sitting at the gate cleaning out his ears with a Q-tip.