31 Mar 2005

So I’ve hopped on the tram at some godforsaken hour on Wednesday evening (well actually, it was more like seven o’clock) (but with public transport any time after seven is godforsaken) to get to my piano lesson. I’m still in my school dress but since the sun had gone down and it was already freezing and blustery outside, I’d popped on a hoodie. My hair was pulled back from my face and I had absolutely no makeup on, except for lipgloss but I wear lipgloss absolutely everywhere so it doesn’t count, so it wasn’t like I was in look-at-me, I’m-a-sexy-schoolgirl mode either.

It’s dark and the tram was mostly empty so I secured myself a row of seats at the back. I look up in all innocence and suddenly there’s this guy, two seats up and across the aisle, fully twisted backwards in his seat and staring at me. Okay, I thought, that’s really odd. Surreptitiously sneaking a glance, I took in his baseball cap, faded sweatshirt and skateboard under his arm. Which made him even more odd, as he looked to be about twenty, and as we all know guys over the age of eighteen really shouldn’t be channeling the whole skater dude/mall rat look.

As I looked out the window I could still feel him staring at me out of the corner of my peripheral vision. I faked my casually surveying the room look and as I met his eye for a split second he smiled at me. Creepazoid. I quickly averted my gaze, pretending not to have noticed, mentally projecting please stop staring, please stop staring, because you have noooooo idea what kind of weirdo takes public transport when the sun goes down. Or before the sun goes up, for that matter. Anyway, after he realized I wasn’t going to acknowledge him he turned back around and got off a few stops later. Thank God.

I try to make it a policy not to talk to strangers on public transport (especially if they’re creepy), unless I see them regularly or if I’m telling the dickhead to take his bag off the seat so we can fit another twenty people on an already maximum-capacity bus. (If they’re hot however, that’s a whole other fajita – so crucify me for being shallow.) Like the time the crazy old lady with seven layers of clothing sat next to me, clutched my hand and told me the Japanese ships were coming in the dock today. (Er, okay, please let go of my hand now.) Or the time when I was ten (TEN, for Christ’s sake!) and a middle-aged guy with a beard and a potbelly started chatting me up and practically asked me for my phone number. (Almost more disturbing than being whistled at by three corporate-suited Greek dudes in a red sports car. Come to think of it, definitely more disturbing.) Ah yes, a childhood of busy parents has long inured me to the joys of the public transport system.

Sorry, you have to whack me before I go off on one of them hot dang rascally tangents, Billy Bob. As I was saying, after Skater Dude got my brush-off, I felt kind of guilty. I don’t know, maybe I’ve developed a conscience or something, but what if he wasn’t trying to hook onto me? What if he smiles and stares weirdly at everyone he sees on public transport? Then I’d have just given an unassuming stranger the impression that I’m an up-herself ice queen (not to be confused with a carousel ice-cream). Should I have smiled back briefly and left it at that? Or would that have signified the go-ahead for him to come over and start chatting me up, which I was so not wanting?

What is the correct etiquette when a creepy guy you have no interest in smiles at you on a tram?

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//8:09 am

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23 Mar 2005

Saturday is a day of routine. Far from being the recovery from a (far from regular) Big Night Out, I get up at precisely 8:25 a.m., eat a harried breakfast and do my hair in the car while on the way to Tai Chi at nine o’ clock, which we are regularly late for anyway. Gosh, I really need to get myself a life.

Anyway, from nine to about ten-fifteen I learn Tai Chi in our oddling little bunch of senior citizens and midlife crisis-ers. In general it’s kind of sucky – the Tai Chi itself isn’t bad exercise but everyone is so damn slow to pick things up and rectify problems that it’s like being in the physical equivalent of a school class full of jocks. Hang on… Except that as a rule jocks are pretty coordinated and good at physical stuff. Well, you know what I mean.

So after Tai Chi we drive to the library and MD stocks up on her weekly supply of weirdass foreign DVDs. (Yeah, I know, we go to the library on a weekly basis – you don’t need to remind me how sad that is.) A few blocks drive from the library is the market, where we buy a week’s worth of fruit and veg on sale. Usually I balk at actually joining MD and DD on this pleasant little outing (not unless there’s food involved, anyway) as having to manoeuvre a shopping trolley that doesn’t turn around strollers, snotty children and deranged Russian grandmothers invokes in me a special kind of twitchy claustrophobia that is not fun. Not fun at all. And also because all three of us are still dressed in our Tai Chi gear of head to toe black sweats – not so much samurai ninja as a freakshow of travelling mimes. And not very good ones at that.

But now is the dawning of a new era – grocery shopping has officially shifted to leisurely Friday afternoons in order to make room for intensive Tai Chi at one. Having grasped the basic concepts of Tai Chi square form that many of our happy nine o’clock campers are still struggling with, and showing a moderate amount of proficiency for the activity, Mister Master has decided to enlist me in extra training in order to go for a grading, which would mean that I would be able to truthfully say that I have completed square form. Super funky. (Even though it’s a complex form of modified martial art and you never stop learning yada yada yada but you know.) So yay! No more doddering about with the senior citizen crowd, repeating the same things that I’ve already done a million times before – and actually learning the deeper stuff instead. And then after I’ve mastered the round form I can start messing around with broadswords and staffs and shit. Even more super funky.

And as I was watching the one o’clockers do their thang with the weapons, I saw Brendan. Who has grown that rat’s tail thing at the back of his head, which I will never fathom as it is such a horrible way to ruin a perfectly good haircut. Convulses. But I am almost willing to forgive him for the follicle faux pas because oh my god that boy is built! And he knows kung fu! (There is nothing hotter than an Asian guy doing kung fu. And this is coming from a girl who doesn’t even particularly LIKE Asian guys.) So whaddaya know it, the first Asian guy I have found to be hot. So strange.

Posted By Little Miss Nobody//9:46 am

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