Category: Interactions

You can never be too polite! Like the guy currently standing in front of me at the Lidl cash register, who is saying sorry in advance by buying a single tulip with his sixpack of cheap beer.

Two jolly old women enter the overfilled train.

“I’m going to sit here”, says the fat one, poking  a guy with a huge suitcase.

“I’m going to sit over here”, answers the one with the glasses and motions a tiny Filippina.

The train rearranges itself. They sit. The train settles down.

They look at each other through the aisle. Inconvenient.

“Or maybe we can ask that man?” asks the one with the glasses to both the fat one and due to loudness the man.

“Maybe he’ll let us sit together?” asks the fat one, only with a period instead of a question mark.

They look at the man. The man looks back. They open their mouths. “Excuse me sir, are you a christian man?”

“I’ll get up”, says the man, only without words but just by removing his butt from his chair and, weirded out, moving up the aisle.

The women sit next to each other and they will live happily ever after, though they never will get answer to their question.

“Four ninety-five please”, says the scrawny woman at the strawberry stand.

“Here you are”, I say as I hand her a fiver, straightening a dog-ear on it.

“That’s polite”, she says, taking the money.

“My mom told me it’s impolite to give people crumpled bank notes”, I say, smiling politely.

“My kids don’t do that”, she says as she pockets the fiver.

“It’s never too late to teach them”, I answer.

She stares blankly ahead. “Sometimes, it is.”