Unless you’re Rosa Parks, giving away your seat on a bus or train is usually the right thing to do. Often when using underground railway systems I won’t take a seat at all just to save me the worrisome hand over moment. What if someone other than the intended beneficiary tries to step in? Does etiquette require me to tackle them?
This particular issue of the transference of a privileged seating position is further complicated when on theLondonunderground; a place in a city where conversations with strangers are typically reserved for armed robbery.
So how does one manage to offer a seat to an elderly or disabled person in a city where everyone’s as eager to avoid human contact as I am?
For reasons such as this I made a crucial error during a recent tube journey whereby the vast influx of people, general confusion and my being half asleep caused me to miss the ideal window of transference.
I’d lost the moment.
I couldn’t just pick a person at random they’d think something had happened or someone had just told me to move. There was no motivation beyond being too slow to realise that I should’ve given up my seat already; and I’d only bring that fact more strongly into view.
How many people more deserving of a seat than I were in the crowd? Five? Seven? I couldn’t be sure but I could at least safely assume that every single person on that train thought I was the worst human being who had ever lived.
I wanted to move. I wanted to say something.
Is saying something actually more of a faux pas on the London Underground?
I glanced about at other seated passengers in the hope of making myself feel relatively less of a curse upon human decency.
Some of them looked young; strong even. But how could I be sure they didn’t all have chronic back pain or severe ligament injuries?
Was I the only one?
However, as my stop approached my mind had returned to a state of utter tranquillity.
It’d taken me longer than I may have imagined (And never again shall I get on public transport without having drawn out several test flow charts for myself) but the answer was blindingly obvious.
The train stopped.
I reached above my head, grabbed a handle and heaved my body upright.
“Excuse me.”
The words eased from my mouth like a gentle breeze.
One hand gently guided passengers either side.
The other grabbed seriously to chair tops and other handles as I limped painfully towards the door.
Passengers graciously moved aside for this unfortunate individual.
It took a lot of mock-effort to disembark.
That’ll teach them to think I was a healthy young man refusing to give up my seat.
I am disabled. Just not physically.