Antsy Pantsy

This morning, at about 3 stops into the train ride, a man got on the train who had a laptop bag and another bag attached to his person. At this point, there weren't any window seats open, so he was going to have to sit next to someone. I, of course, was in a window seat, so I could very well be his neighbor -- if he picked me.

Instead of making this an easy process for himself, he decided to become weird antsy-pantsy man.

He stood right at the beginning of the aisle. He looked around. He put his laptop bag down. He then did something that looked like he was taking his shoes off, but unless I stared at Mr. antsy-pantsy, I couldn't tell what, exactly, he was doing.

He kept looking around at all the different seats. I told him telepathically to sit his butt down in that first seat near him and stop acting so weird. And please don't sit next to me. I cannot stand having antsy-pantsy people sitting next to me. It makes me crazy. On my way from Chicago to Boston, I got stuck sitting in between two men...oh, that's another story in and of itself. I just hate people who have to constantly move a body part around and can't just relax. Not to mention an antsy-pantsy with so much extra baggage.

He picked up his bag. No, no, no, no, I'm not here, you don't want to sit here, no one wants you coming down the aisle. He started walking, one step, two step, stop. No, no -- turn around now and go back -- back I say! He looked around again. Do not sit here, do not sit here, I may look small and the seat next to me may look like a really good spot to sit down your antsy-pantsy butt, but just breath through it and sit somewhere else. He put his bag down again. He picked it up. Uh-oh, this isn't looking good. Go away! He turned around and walked to the front of the aisle again and stopped. Phew, that was a close call... He put his bag down in the same spot as before and finally decided to sit down. In the front. Where he could have sat from the beginning and saved all of us from using our telepathic powers of suggestion.

Next thing I know, his laptop was out and he was enjoying a fun game of solitaire. Now I was really happy he didn't sit next to me because there's nothing like having someone larger than you sitting next to you who thinks it's perfectly alright and down right just dandy that they play on their laptop, and so you get elbow-jabbed the whole ride. It almost seems like people with laptops think they get special seating privileges the average person (read: me) doesn't get because all he/she is doing is reading a book. And don't forget being smaller, which means you're not taking up as much space as a "normal" person (while I am a little chunky, I'm a bit petite -- more from being short than anything else). For some reason it means we've given up our extra personal space to larger people want to sit next to us. Like we're supposed to accommodate them. Or maybe we were born to accommodate them?

Anyway. This has been one of the weirder "weird people" incidents I've had in a long time on BART. Ah, but that doesn't top the weirdest incident today: A chef was wandering around my work area. We don't house chefs here. I made eye contact and quickly looked away. Now where's the guy who wears a cape in the elevator? He would top things for sure.