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A troll lives in Brooklyn (Menopauso Baggins)
Although I am trying to redirect the content of this blog towards dog shit, I feel compelled to alert the general public about an honest-to-god troll I encountered recently on the F train.
A troll (as defined by Wikipedia) is:
…a fearsome member of a mythical anthropomorph race from Scandinavian folklore. Their role ranges from fiendish giants – similar to the ogres of English fairy tales – to a devious, more human-like folk of the wilderness, living underground in hills or mounds.
Saturday August 5, 2006
My husband and I hopped on the F train at East Broadway so we could meet a co-worker of his in Park Slope. Unfortunately, what would otherwise be a short and simple journey became a complicated one: at Carroll Street the train stopped. The conductor said there was a “medical emergency” at Smith and 9th Street. We waited.
And waited.
Eventually the conductor came out of his booth and told us to go to the front of the train. I got very excited at the prospect of walking through subway tunnels (I have read The Mole People at least three times), pulled out my camera and adjusted the aperture for low light.
I bolted to the front of the car (my husband lagged 2-3 people behind me) only to get stuck behind a middle-to-old-aged woman (whom I will henceforth refer to as Menopauso Baggins) who could not deduce how to open the door. Fucking amateur. If this woman rode the G or (worse yet) the E train on a regular basis, she’d know damn well how these doors work. Such knowledge makes the crucial difference between residing in the car with the stinky crazy guy or moving on to better (READ: less fetid and potentially dangerous) pastures.
This woman’s ignorance and/or intransigence finally pissed off the conductor enough to motivate him to open the door personally. He did so (cursing the whole time) and then she— big ass, big-ass satchel and all— myself, and numerous others went to the next car. Upon entering the next car, I tested my camera: took a picture. This act of photo-journalistic enthusiasm was sufficient cause for Menopauso Baggins to chew me out.
MB: You shouldn’t be taking pictures!
Me: Yes ma’am!
Menpauso Baggins is obviously acclimatized to lower (younger) creatures posturing in submission in her presence. Not unlike a baboon, she bares her teeth (and flaming red ass) and throws her own feces around in order to get her way. Her advanced age and large stature entitle her to bellow out orders and be an overall pain in the ass.
This is was her winning formula.
You see, Miss Heather spent most of her life in Texas (where children are taught to revere their elders in a manner uncannily similar to Shinto). Miss Heather moved to New York City in order to attend graduate school. The money she had set aside (Texas wages) did not go very far in the rental market. As a result, I she lived two very long years in Morris Park, Bronx.
Two years of getting chewed out by obnoxious old crones (clad in rollers and muu muus) deprogrammed me her of any blind reverence for the elderly. I now understand that insanity (or simple assholism) has no “shelf life”. If anything, assholism only becomes more virulent with age. If you conduct yourself in a respectable fashion, I will respect you; if you demand respect whilst behaving like a raving bitch, I will not.
That said, I’ll continue.
Menopauso Baggins managed to open the door leading to the next car on her own, but she expected me to hold it open so she could negotiate her bigass (bag) through it. After chewing me out no less, that takes balls. I acquiesced.
Sometimes yes is better than no. I held the door open for her, but made sure to let go a little too early so it would slam into that big-ass bag of hers (whose heft led me to believe that it was filled with dead babies for her to eat). I did this each and every time. Smiling.
And she gave me no lip.
I saw no tunnels when I finally emerged, only the Carroll Street subway stop. My husband and I ran late for dinner as well. Nonethless, I came away from this experience pumped.
There’s a new alpha female on the F train, and her name is Miss Heather.
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