Much Ado about NOTHING

Strangers on a Train

On the train, heading home, I sit across from a middle-aged Asian woman wearing some kind of blue pantsuit. She's speaking emphatically, in a foreign language, into her phone and seems mildly upset. She watches me winding the cord on my headphones, but i sense she isn't really seeing me at all. In her mind's eye, she's seeing whomever she's talking to.

To her left, two seats away (the seats between are empty because the train isn't very crowded) sits a blandly handsome twentysomething man with a head of fluffy brown hair, dressed in a navy-blue business suit. He stares unsmilingly at his phone and keeps snapping a blue rubber wrist band, as if restless. There's some kind of white symbol on the band that I can't make out -- crossed hockey sticks? He occasionally looks up and glances at me, but it's as if he's looking through me.

To my left, two seats away, sits a middle-aged guy with a crew cut, dressed in a polo shirt and jeans, both blue. His arms are folded and he stares out the train window with an angry expression. He looks ex-military. I take it he's thinking about something that bothers him. He ignores me as I sit there in my blue jeans and blue stripped shirt.

I glance back and forth between these three traveling companions, feeling like the invisible man, as I listen to my sad book through my headphones. I often think I look odd, or at least out of place, but none of these people seem to think so. I'm part of the scenery to them, like a background extra on a movie set. I know they won't remember me five seconds after I step off the train, but for some reason I've remembered them here. We had something in common, though they didn't realize it. We were all wearing blue. And probably feeling that way too.