On the Metro: Why Can't We Sit Together?

Thanks to a new internship I'm taking up I've started riding the train. I ride the Metro Blue Line from Long Beach all the way to the end of the line and—like a lot of people riding, I'm sure—overhear the occasional noteworthy event. This happened the other day: The first thing everyone in our car heard was a short, heavyset woman with shaved hair woman simultaneously stuttering shouting and and sobbing "WHY CAN'T WE SIT TOGETHER? I WANT TO SIT TOGETHER." She was following a stout, balding man who obviously wanted nothing to do with her, she presumably a disabled homeless person looking awkwardly for companionship and he a casual commuter not interested in making any new friends. He ignored her, avoided eye contact, walked away repeatedly but she, still obviously upset wouldn't stop asking "WHY CAN'T WE SIT TOGETHER?"

When all passive methods of warding the woman off failed he finally confronted her: "I don't want to sit wit you. We don't have to sit together. I can be on one side of the train and you can be on the other."

Apparently that was enough to pacify the woman. She stopped shouting, sat down on a seat across the aisle from the man and began mumbling to herself. About five minutes went before the man got up, at the time I thought it was to make a quiet exit to another car while the woman was engrossed in something else. But he didn't. Instead, he went up to the woman and calmly said to her "OK. I'm going to go to another part of the train. I want you to stay here. You have my cell phone number in case you need me. I'll let you know when we're getting off."

Not once during that entire encounter did it occur to me that the two knew one another, and finding it out changed the dynamics of the conversation completely. The two were about the same age—perhaps they were brother or sister? Regardless, I'll never know. The pair got off of the train, when I did and we went our separate ways: the man looking a little apologetic and the woman looking a little more calm, a little more content, and a lot less worried.

Photo from the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library and Archive at the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority and used under a Creative Commons License.