I don’t take the train very often any more. I work from home, and so I don’t get to see how train etiquette is changing.
When I did regularly take the train, it was before the age of smartphones. So rather than spending the whole journey staring down at a phone, I generally used either to look out of the window or look at the other passengers.
One fun oddity I occasionally got to see was the sight of a female office worker putting on her make up while she sat on a swaying seat. It was always fun to guess whether she would be applying mascara just as the carriage lurched around a bend, and whether she would make a mess of her face.
But I also wondered why she hadn’t just applied her make up at home, and what other elements of her morning routine she would be prepared to bring onto the train. If the situation escalated, would I see her the next day brushing her teeth?
According to one of my students, the situation has indeed escalated for at least one passenger on a busy train line. My student said that on a morning commuter train, she saw an office lady who was applying hot irons to her hair. The passengers sitting and standing around her had to be careful not to brush against the painfully hot metal.
There used
to be smoking compartments on trains.
Maybe they could be converted into “Just like home compartments”, in
which busy commuters can happily pluck their eyebrows, shave, and clip their
toenails?
Vocabulary:
(for
something to) lurch – to make a sudden unsteady or uncontrolled movement,
especially forwards or to the side
[eg., The
cable car lurched forward when it was hit by a strong gust of wind.]
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