Shouting subway Riders

I’ve seen this many times before, but today in the subway there was a crazed homeless-looking man yelling out in some drunken, foreign language (unless it was gibberish) at no one in particular. I had my headphones on and I could still hear him. He was standing by one of the doors with a young woman seated right next to him. She didn’t even get up and move. She just stared out blindly like he wasn’t even there. She didn’t even really look worried or disturbed. Everyone else looked the same. They just made sure to not make eye contact with him. What if he was upset because everyone was ignoring him?

I wonder what would happen if I had the guts to act that crazy? I’ll bet it would feel pretty damn good to pull that off! And I wonder if people would ignore me or pay attention to me? It might be different for someone dressed clean and decently dressed. What if I was drunken and angry and rambled on about nothing? Would it be different since I’m a “young” woman? Would someone try and talk to me to calm me down? Or yell, [insert thick Brooklyn accent here] “HEY! Shut the hell up already!!!”

That would make for a pretty interesting test.