Shitball

Now that I’m married and I have a ring to ward off freaks, I feel that riding the Blue Line has become the new opportunity for the crazies to court me. They look for me, see me and then sit practically on my lap. They always smell really bad and sometimes talk to themselves, or to me. Everyone else on the train buries them-self into their Kindles, while I feel 6 feet under. Clearly, I’m on my own…there’s no wing man at my side.

It was a cold winter rush hour and the train was running late. I huddled in the glass box and pressed the “warming” button over and over. Nothing like a blast of heat from a light bulb to save your life. Finally, the choo choo raced in. The doors opened and a wall of people stood in my way. The train was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Somehow, I managed to push and shove my way into my own real estate, but I soon realized that I was standing in a bad neighborhood. The smell hit me hard…clearly the smell of poop. I wondered if someone had a cage full of puppies at their feet and one little dog had an accident. I looked around and didn’t see any pets. As my eyes wandered, I made eye contact with the man who had clearly shit in his pants. He was sitting down on his brown pancake, and his strung-out lady friend sat next to him like a bobblehead dashboard dog.

He looked at me. I looked at him. He sized up me, I sized up him. I started to hum a tune in my head… the other day I saw a shit-pants man, a shit-pants man a-way up there! (Camp songs help me cope during desperate times).

He was on to me. He knew that I knew. I looked back and forth and tried to find a diversion. Quick! Read the advertisement asking if I I’m a drug mule, look at the other one with a pig that begs me to be a vegetarian. This was a great day to forget my Kindle. He was looking right through me.

The train came to a halt at the Kedzie stop and he stood up with his babe under his arm. They walked towards me and the smell was choking. As he came near, he did these subtle kung-fu kicks to loosen up his stool. When he reached the opening doors, he lunged one leg forward and turds came shooting out the bottom of his pant leg!

Some landed on the platform, but a shitball rolled into the corner nearest me. He exited the train and I stared at the poop ball, carefully inching my self further away. No one on the train flinched. They were too wrapped up in other stuff. I felt like shaking them by the shoulders and yelling at them to wake up. What’s this world coming to when people just think riding a train with a shitball is just an average commute?

  • Brian

    I miss our conversations about the things we would witness on the Blue line, glad to get yours again! I think the things you can witness going on around you are way more entertaining than whatever you might be reading. Reading about your shitball experience is hilarious, but I’m guessing you weren’t laughing that day! I’ll never forget the couple who was having sex on the Blue Line platform (Racine stop) at around 5:15 one day. Daylight, lots of people around, it went on for about ten minutes, several positions, right in the middle of the platform. Hardly anyone noticed. One woman who did notice sat down next to me, both of our jaws were gaping, dumbfounded looks. I would look back, she would ask “are they still..”, I’d say “yeah, but different now”. People standing right next to them just looking for the train, completely oblivious of what was OBVIOUSLY going on. It would be funny if it was the shitball couple!

  • Sharon

    OMG! That is frickin gross and hilarious! I’ve not yet had the (um, pleasure?)of such a fantastically weird and disgusting experience on the EL…although I did sit in the same car recently as a compulsive cougher — who repeatedly hacked these deep, wet, throaty coughs — that actually made me dry-heave at one point just listening to it. Thank God I had my iPod, which I quickly plugged in and turned up as loud as it would go to drown out the cougher…. A shitball, though, that takes the cake!

  • Saugier, Amber

    Wow! That is an amazing story…that’s kinda what it’s like to be a mom potty training a kid.

  • Danielle Kennedy

    OMG! I have tears in my eyes laughing at this…and thanking God that it wasn’t me he was aiming his shitballs at! Too funny!