I’ve stopped using BART regularly for my morning commute. Whether or not our so-called economic recovery has been jobless, my anecdotal experience is that the BART trains are now regularly packed with commuters headed somewhere, so much so that when I went in early one morning last week, on the train at 6:15 a.m., it was already standing room only into the City. SRO? At 6:15?
My feet, knees, and ankles are no longer what they were when I ran cross country all those years ago, and years of standing on buses and trains have taken their toll. I need to sit. So I’ve been doing the casual carpool thing. Most often it’s quiet and uneventful, but every so often there’s a livewire.
For instance, a couple weeks ago two of us rode in the car of a chatty fellow who works as a historical photographer, taking pictures to create a record of what City buildings look like. When S.F. burned in the great fire after the earthquake, all records were lost. So I like that San Francisco is creating a photographic record of its most important buildings, and it was interesting to listen to him talk about his work, and about film photography. E.g., I never knew that Kodak company used to maintain a herd of cattle specifically because their hooves were essential in determining film speed, and the diet for the cattle had an effect on the gelatin they used.
My commute home is usually less eventful. Getting on at Civic Center means I usually get a seat before all the financial district workers pile on at Montgomery and Embarcadero. I get an aisle seat, close to the doors, so I can squeeze out if needed.
About a month ago an irritated, ferret-faced woman got on and was annoyed when a slow-moving person in front of her took a seat she wanted. Her second option was the window seat next to me. She looked a bit like John Turturro—she could have been his cousin.
I turned my knees sideways so she could pass, as I’ve done, oh, a thousand or more times for others, without incident. She kicked both my shoes on her way to the seat, then began chewing me out for not getting up to let her in.
In fairness, an obese young woman was sitting in the handicapped/elderly seat in front of us, with her knees spread wide, so it was hard for ferret-face to get past her. But I had been reading up to that point and was a bit startled by the whole business.
I calmly said something about having done this commute for nine years without incident, and she retorted that none of those people had chosen to say anything. The obese woman sitting perpendicular to us nodded sympathetically to her, as if reprobates such as me were the cause of so much aggravation. I let it drop, even as I thought of more snappy comebacks, like I see the fat woman in front of us has her knees spread wide—on her behalf, I apologize.
When I studied grammar years ago, they taught us about prescriptive and descriptive grammars. Prescriptive grammar prescribes right and wrong, such as teaching that one should not use the double negative, or the word ain’t. Descriptive simply explains sentence construction, so if a kid says “I ain’t got none,” in spite of the double negative and the slang, the sentence has a functioning grammar that can be described.
I’ve thought about those theories in relation to how people approach the world, and I’m pretty sure ferret-face is a prescriptivist. We all have our own ideas on how to make the world a better place, and some of us are ready to confront evil head on, even in the face of a distracted 57-year-old tired commuter who tries to get out of her way.
The rest of the ride went by without incident, except I noticed she broke BART rules by getting out a beverage bottle and drinking on the train. But I wasn’t going to admonish her.
And then our paths crossed again, about a week ago, and I got another amusing perspective on just how prescriptive she can be. I’ll post that episode next.
OmbudsBen 
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