Old Blue Haired Bag's

My wife started working downtown last March so that meant that now we could car pool our way to the old Metra. This is good because now we only use one car a day and only pay for parking on one car we split the costs. When the wife was working in Vernon Hills or Elmhurst on top of gas costs we were getting hit with the cost of tolls. All in all it was over $150 bucks a month just for travel for her. Now, her train ticket is only $89 dollars and I usually pay for parking so she is saving some major cabbage.

The down side at least for me is now I have to deal with the old train hags in the morning. Please let me explain. I used to have my routine where I grabbed a paper, sat on the top deck and zoned out until the train parked at Union Station. My wife is not a big fan of the upper deck and sometimes in the top deck we can’t sit together so she suggested we sit downstairs. Since, at the time I really didn’t care where we sat, I obliged. When I sat upstairs I had to deal with the occasional fool but overall in the morning people just kept to themselves and sat quietly.

Since I now sit downstairs I have had to come face to face with what I consider the worst group of morons I’ve had the displeasure of meeting. There are about five of them that I see every morning. They are all in their late forties to early fifties. They have the most inane conversations, devoid of any semblance of relevance to anything at all. They discuss the weather in quite detail most mornings and it usually goes down hill from there.

The collective IQ of this posse is below a hundred, I guarantee it. You have the first old bag that constantly complains about her daughter. You have the cigarette lady whose smoked so many Marlboro’s that her voice is huskier than Barry White’s. She’s the in facto ringleader of the bunch. Than you have the dim-witted security guard. Just what she is securing I don’t know. Needless to say I would not want to depend on her to secure a zip lock bag let alone an entire building. Let’s not forget the bitchy little lady who I’ve personally never heard have a nice thing to say about anyone or anything. Lastly, you have the smallish bookish old fart that just nods her head in agreement with what the other robots no matter how insane a comment they make.

The whole scene just makes me want to switch cars but what’s the point. I’m sure another car will have some other fossil coffee clutch club that will eventually get on my nerves. The one good thing about the rear cars (where we sit) is that they don’t get to crowded and the wife and I can always find a seat to share. Still, I shudder everytime I see them.

I guess it speaks to a larger problem. The one thing I noticed in all of them is just how unhappy they all are. It seems to me that they either married the wrong guy or settled for a mediocre job and they hate their station in life and find that it is easier to complain to the rest of the world than it is to change things. They feel it is to late to anything about it and that is what is truly sad. Sure, my job sucks but once I leave those doors I do everything in my power to leave my problems there.

As for their personal lives, if you are that unhappy just leave already. I am so glad I waited until I was ready and mature enough to get married and that I didn’t settle. All the validation that I need is looking at these sad sacks every brutal morning.