What we are up against

It’s a late Friday afternoon, I am off work and I make my way to the subway. As expected, it is crowded.

I am relieved to find an empty seat and I sit next to a man in his 30s. Across me, a teenager stuck on his phone and his rucksack occupies two seats.

In the next stop a couple in this 60s and their daughter get on the wagon.. As they are standing next to me I hear them speaking a nordic language – tourists, I think to myself. For some reason, some tourists trigger a weird sense of local pride in me and I feel the urge to be nice to them, to show them the good side of my side. So I took it personally when the older lady tried to sit next to the teenager (you know the move. You avoid talking to people in the subway, but you still want the seat, so you slowly move towards the seat, you are almost sitting, and then you turn to look the person, and when they look up, you nod in acknowledgment and maybe even smile as they make space for you) and he did not move. He did not acknowledge her.

A passenger instantly offers her seat to the older lady, which she refuses.

The teenager does not take his eyes off his phone.

I gently tap him on his knee and he looks up I ask „would you mind moving a bit so the lady can sit? You are taking up two seats“.

Before I continue the story, I want to ask you. What would you do in that situation?

Do you know what he did? It was worst than doing nothing.

He shrugged his shoulders, and went back to his phone!

The passenger who offered their seat to the older lady laughs a bit, as if to say what can you do. I am furious and can feel the blood throbbing in my head. I am shocked, speachless and furious. A shoulder shrug is not a response I could accept! Indifference does not belong in the panoply of reactions to when someone politely and directly asks you to give up one of your two seats for someone else. Oh, I am fuming.

In my head I am going over things to say to this sorry excuse of a person, the misfit who was not raised in accordance to the norms of my city, the indifferent teenager who might one day be responsible for someone at work, at home. As I am thinking what I want to say, I realise the moment has passed – we are now 3 stops further along the line.

But this cannot just be, I keep telling myself. This indifference to the plight of others is as bad as hurting them yourself. There must be consequences. And I am shocked to discover a new side to myself, the petty one. Or the vigilante side- depends on how you look at it. I am determined to not get off the train before he does. I will wait till the last stop if I have to. I decide I will trip him over. I‘ll just inconspicuously stretch my leg as he is getting up to get off. No harm in stretching one‘s legs, especially at the end of a long working day.

Unsurprisingly, my petty plan doesn‘t make me feel any better. It only channels my anger at this one distant point.

And then the next thing happen.

In the next stop even more people get on and another woman tries to sit next to the teenager. She even talks to him. He does nothing. Not even shrug.

It is then I embraced yet another part of me. The middle-aged mum-who-takes-no-shit side of me.

I tap on his knee once, and once was enough.

He looks up.

„Young man, will you finally move your ass?! There are people who want to sit!“

He slides his bag to the side and moves indeed his ass.

He does not shrug.

The woman takes her seat and I resume my vigilante plan of staying on the train till he leaves and trip him over. Alas, he evades my stretching leg. What I have failed to take into consideration is that he was a phone-zombie and as such he only looks down so of course he say my leg.

So many feelinngs are rushing through me at this pointn – I feel content that he moved and the seat was freed up, I feel a bit disappointed for not having actualised my revenge, and very shocked at the pettiness of my vigilante plan. I also feel lonely and let down by my fellow passengers who remained quiet throughout the incident.

It‘s been almost two weeks since the incident and the reason it upset me so is clearer.

This young man‘s behaviour goes against everything I believe in. His indifference was infuriating and so difficult to engage with.

It was infuriating because he invalidated all social norms a society functions with – solidarity, care, reciprocity, kindness. His indifference was breaking the rules of a functioning society.

It was difficult to engage with because had he been an obvious douchebag and had actually said „no, I will not move“ the reaction of the other passengers would have been direct. We would have been given permission to feel outrage and to confront him.

Faced with his indifference, what we did was laugh it off – like the passenger who at first offered her seat to the older woman- or ignore it, like the man sitting next to me and the rest of the people around us. His indifference immobilised us.

Which is what also saddened me. Out of all the people there who could have said something in defense of the principles of decency, I was the only one who spoke out. The rest laughed it off, quietly judged the teenager and then went back to their texting, or music, or book. The passengers were silent. They were complicit. Where was their anger at the injustice unfolding right in front of their eyes?

I did feel anger, so much of it. And I had no moral reservations. I had planned my retribution and tried to execute it. I was actually frustrated when it didn‘t work out. That was a new side to me. It was unsettling and I am still working that out.

The subway incident troubled me deepy as it held up what we are up against, those of us who want to waive a better, kinder world:

Indifference, silence and anger.