The other day going to Zurich. Taking one of the small trains down the mountain and then the express. The local train was already in the station so I climbed on and sat down.
Shortly thereafter a teenage kid started banging on the side of the train with his hands, hitting it repeatedly and hard just outside my window. I couldn’t see his face as he had a baseball cap on sideways – pointed left – and kept his head in a awkward looking down to the right position. He seemed highly strung and his body position mixed with light blue mid calf long shorts, tennis shoes and shirt gave off a feeling of uncontrolled energy. He eventually wandered over towards two other teenagers but was soon pacing the platform in an almost comically exaggerated hoodlum’s gait. You know, that up and rolling yet hunched movement with lots of shoulder action; almost a slow motion breakdance move.
The two teens got onto the train, sat across the aisle and began talking about how fucked up on drugs the baseball cap guy, who was now pacing the train, was. Meanwhile two girls in teen slut uniforms came on board, greeting the two guys with curses, insults and laughs, and plopped down across from me. Mr baseball cap eventually managed to sit down too, a few seats forward.
The tones became brash and loud as the boys, as well as the girls, put on their “I’m tough and not to be fucked with!” personae. Sounding as lower class and using as many raw imaged metaphors as possible, the conversation turned to tattoos and nasty facebook posts… Oh YOU wrote that! Yeah! I wrote that he’s a shit! OMG… You didn’t!! Interspersed with curses, punctuated with cellphone activities and connected remarks.
An unsolicited trip that didn’t last more than 15 minutes when, on a common accord, the two girls got up and moved to the front of the wagon. The guys lost their cool act, tones became normal; work and sports. Tensions dropped, the train regained it’s composure of normality. Even Mr baseball cap settled down and was unheard of to the end of the line.
Kind of like uranium…