3.24.2006

Tiny Finance

I was riding the train today, as I do every day, sitting in the back seat on top. It's a double wide, and since I'm on the train for 1.5 hours, I like to be comfortable. Whilst I was perusing the Movie section for things to add to my Netflix que (Belle du Jour, Stoned, Blow-Up, Woman on the Year, Thank you for Smoking), a diminutive man bustles through a row of people for the right to sit next to me.

He's wearing a bright red LL Bean Elmer Fudd style hunting cap that is about two sizes two small for his over-sized head. He takes the hat and LL Bean Winter coat off, and sits down. It's only now that I see the bluetooth headset. At that moment, I'm pissed.

He opens his Brookstone laptop backpack and takes out his blackberry and a notepad. He proceeds to take notes inbetween stealing glances at my newspaper. It finally comes.

"Hey, what's up? You on the train? Which Train? Yeah, me too. The 7 o clock. What's with this BG&H meeting today at 4:30? Yeah, right, but what are we hoping to accomplish. "

I don't care about his meeting, I don't care about BG&H. And what kind of a dick has a 4:30 meeting on Friday anyway? And now he's talking to another ass on an entirely different train. That whole discussion took about 5 minutes. And I had forgotten my 80's music filled MP3 player at work. I was stuck. Finally I hear "is that all?"

He was just tricking me, giving me false hope that his evil phone conversation was about to end. The discussion turned to 'the markets.' "They're quiet today....right, but that's just one stock.... Well, Google is pretty volatile anyway.....no, you see the NASDAQ 100 is only 100 stocks, the &P 500 is 500 stocks. So Google wouldn't have that much effect on the S&P."

Now he's doing basic math with a fellow financier. By the end of the discussion, I take out my ginormous laptop. He basically stares at it for a few minutes. Then he opens his LL Bean laptop backpack and takes out his. At first, I thought this was some kind of silent pissing match developing between us. - one that he couldn't possibly win. Then I see his laptop, and it's just a normal laptop.

He puts it on his lap. And proceeds to use it a table so he can write notes a little more clearly. I got up and screamed at him. "Don't you have notepad on that thing? It's not a goddam table. If you can't use technology except to annoy people, you shouldn't have it." I then opened my emergency window on the train and threw it out.

Maybe I didn't.

4 comments:

Kelsgarden said...

I still can't get past the 1.5 hr train ride - so, like 3 hrs a day

(of course, woodchuck will point out that he sometimes has a 5 or 6 or 11 hour drive home at night but we aren't listening to him)

I sometimes have this guy sit down across the room from me, on one of those blue tooth things - and just when I decide to say something to him I'll hear "yeah, well the directions say to use 18" but there isn't a f*&% trailer made that can accomodate . . . "

and I can't throw his laptop out the window because it would end up in the herb garden

But I'm with you on this one - and if he starts wearing one of those elmer fudd hats you'll be the first to know

Muskyboy said...

Dude, you got issues. Why are you so concerned with what others are doing?

Woodchuck said...

At least with a train you have a window to dream about, on a plane you are stuck with the fat SOB sitting there and all you can do is hope that the batterys run out on the computer. On the bright side you only have the cell phone until they close the front door, but then he wants to talk....to you.

There should be some type of check in at the station so that if you are one of those #$%wipes that want sit an let everyone on the train know what you are doing via the cell phone...here is a special car just for all of you.

Kelsgarden said...

maybe if Musky was more concerned with what others were doing it would improve his game . . .

I mean poker game . . .