Turds

Okay, so I haven't blogged in over a month, because a) I'm lazy, and b) there's more drama going on than I'd ever think about putting on the Internet. But I'm back in the blogosphere tonight because I have a story that can't NOT be told. I rode home on the Metro tonight a bit after 7pm, and as the train was chugging along I came to realize that there were Two. Human. Turds. on the floor across the aisle from me. This nice-looking woman started to sit in the seat there, and another woman nearby hollered and grabbed her arm and stopped her from sitting down. On the floor, where her feet would have gone ... two big poops. One of which had already been stepped in once. Now, I pick up dog poop numerous times a day, and I'm pretty familiar with what that looks like. This was not somebody's seeing eye dog's accident. This was actual human shit. Oddly enough -- and maybe this speaks to the nature of what city life does to you -- neither I nor anyone else in the vicinity got up and changed cars. I rode through 10 stops and then got off and ran up to the front of the train to tell the driver. "Um ... there's ... uh ... excrement on the floor in the back of car two." "Aw man, not again!" ("?!?!") "They do that all the time. They been doin' that a lot on here." "Okay, well ... um ..." "Thank you for letting me know, ma'am. I'm sorry you had to see that. And thank you for riding Metro." So polite! This is wrong on so many levels, but my chief question is this: How does one poop on the Red Line in the middle of rush hour without anyone noticing? I have to assume that the turd wasn't riding around on the train all day, left there un-noticed since a very-early-morning, empty train. I got on the train about 7:20pm, and rush hour effectively starts about 4:30pm, so in that three-hour window did somebody drop trou, turn around backwards in the seat and poop while other people were sitting in the surrounding rows? There just isn't a point in the day when the Red Line is empty enough to do that without someone else being around. And I know that Metro riders have a reputation for being inside their own little iPod/newspaper bubbles, but surely ... please God ... surely someone would notice if the person in the next row up was pooping. Surely someone would report that and they would take that car out of service and turn the lights off and make the people move onto the next car and call some hazmat dudes. I just don't know what to do with any of this.