Irrational

This morning I sat opposite a man on the train who for some reason brought out an irrational feeling of intense dislike within me. I have seen this man a couple of times on the morning commute up to London and so far all I can surmise is that this person appears to be an imbecile.

I don't like having mean thoughts about others, especially people that I don't know because those thoughts are unfounded but this man really stirs something within me that makes me want to throw something at his head.

For the purposes of this post, let's just call him Man.

The first time I saw Man a few weeks ago, he was sitting next to what I gathered was his work colleague. It took me all of three seconds to ascertain that Work Colleague does not like Man. His body language told me everything I needed to know. Man was quite frankly talking b*ll*cks in a loud voice and behaving in a way that told the world, or the train carriage at least, that he thought he was very popular and we all needed to hear what he had to say. He was sitting too close to Work Colleague for comfort -- if life were Dirty Dancing then he was in his dance space without the "let's cha cha!". Work Colleague was trying to be polite, nodding along to the conversation and occasionally smiling a meak smile but you would have to be completely oblivious to realise that he didn't want to be there. I felt a bit sorry for Work Colleague; we've all been stuck in a social situation where we can't escape but so desperately want to.

This morning he irritated me immensely. I sat down opposite Man and remember, this is morning rush hour commuting... A lot of people on the train. Man was sitting in the middle of three seats with his pile of "things" on the seat next to him. If this were a late morning or lunchtime train with hardly a person on there, that wouldn't bother me so much but on the morning rush hour train, putting your things on the seat next to you instead of on the rack above or at least on your lap is like saying "I couldn't give a cr*p if you want to sit down, my stuff is more important than you". It's not pertaining to commuting etiquette! (I apologise for my poor grammar). So Man sits there, reading something or other and then I happen to look up as he is rooting around in his nostril, perhaps hoping to dig up some prehistoric bogey. It actually looked painful he had his finger shoved up there so hard. I should have called Tony and the Time Team. He then pulled his finger out of his nose, looked at the tip and put it in his mouth. It's making me gag just reliving it! Seriously people, if you want to pick your nose in the privacy of your own home then please go ahead but please don't do it and then ingest your findings in front of me on my way to work.

At this point, I couldn't be sure whether I'd uttered something in disgust out loud or not but then I began to wonder why Man was invoking such a reaction in me. I don't know Man and he is not part of my life so why sit on the train feeling annoyed at his (disgusting) manners? My theory: early morning + rain + packed train + Man = annoyed me!

If I were to guess, I'd say that Man actually has low self esteem issues so becomes loud and rude in order to make himself feel better. That's just my crude, early morning psychological analysis of this person!! Alternatively, he could just be a pain in the a** who just happens to have sat opposite me on the wrong mornings and p***ed me off!! The other 50+ people on the train don't annoy me in the slightest though? Hmmm.

This is not my best nor most positive post so I apologise. This won't be a frequent thing, I just felt I needed to write about it. I am a good person really!