I’ve started to prefer the middle of light rail cars to the ends of them.

I used to prefer sitting at either end, where there’s a set of six or so seats and you get your own relatively private and un-crowded little corner.

But I dunno, I think I had one too many experiences having to sit in close proximity to someone who was out of their mind to want to do it anymore. It’s like the back of the bus. Sure there’s valid reasons to want to sit there, but the problem is that it’s the first place that the last people you’d want to sit with, want to sit.

This recent time I was stuck sitting behind this wide-eyed, flailing dude who was constantly looking around in a panic or gesticulating or dancing or adopting absurd positions like having his legs almost perfectly vertically up in the air, against the wall. And the entire time I’m just like “oh fuck oh god don’t look back at me and interact oh please oh god oh fuck” and as we get nearer to my stop, the fucker’s leaning out into the aisle so that if I wanted to get off I’d have to ask him to move or otherwise shove him out of the way. Fortunately he got off at the stop right before mine.

This shit wouldn’t happen in the middle of the light rail, and if it did there’d be a bunch of other people sitting around you experiencing it with you and do something should things go south.