Lessons in etiquette

To a half-blind guy, who doesn’t anticipate the actions of sitting passengers.

After a trying day at work, I waited probably twenty minutes for the seventeen bus, then waddled my half-disabled butt over to the Monticello Station, to catch the Tide home.  Today, unlike my other recent waits at the station, it was hot.  My diaphragm and legs aren’t working well, because of that.

Since I need to cross the tracks to get to the sidewalk at my stop, I sit near the front of the train, so I can cross the tracks before the train departs my station.

I saw the train coming, waddled to where the door would be, held the button to enter for a good ten seconds, the door opened, and I got on.  As I waddled into the car, up the aisle to the door I’d opened, comes someone with a very large stroller, who got off.  I went left to avoid the parent, and went up the stair to one of the higher seats up front.  Our paths didn’t really cross.

The train departs, and I hear from the back of the car, “should have let the stroller get off first!”

Then one of Tidewater’s finest environmentally-minded cyclists, complete with long, unkempt hair, and a sleeveless shirt, walks up the stairs to lecture me about not letting the stroller off first.

Really.  You can’t make this stuff up.  What’s the polietest way I can tell this guy to go …?  I know, Mr. Eastwood, he can’t do that to himself, but I appreciate the sentiment.

Stay awesome, sleeveless biker.  Public transportation would be a much worse place without you.