I'm an avid Calgary transit customer and have come to know the many types of transit riders. I bet that a person's behaviour while riding public transit reveals deeper truths about his/her personality, but I'm just going to describe their transit personae.
Cellphone Guy
Dressed To Impress might be his real name. His cologne diffuses freely and his Blackberry's ring tone is loud, but professional. When he answers the phone, he yells as if it's in the next car and the caller is deaf. The passengers next to him cringe as he spews forth corporate buzzwords like synergy, paradigm shift, and value-added. Luckily, his call is relatively short, but he ends it with a boisterous bout of forced, wheezing laughter, which is probably a sign of his numerous failed attempts to quit smoking.
Cellphone Girl
She's somewhere between jailbait and just right, which means her voice is still screechingly high-pitched and she speaks like a fucking valley girl. You never hear her ring tone because she's been on the phone since you embarked, and she'll keep talking long after you've disembarked. Her conversation goes something like this:
"i was like going to the mall with like matt, and then he like kissed me and i was like ohmygod what am i going to tell derek because like i really like matt but i don't want to like--"
"OH MY GOD! LIKE, DIE!" is what you're thinking as she doesn't.
The Discourteous Jerk
He may take on many forms: you might see him with his feet up on the seat across from him, sitting with his bag filling the seat beside him, or having a nice little nap (sitting down) while a pregnant lady with groceries stands next to him. He might also insist upon wearing his Everest trekking backpack and reading the Herald while standing in the sardine tin that is rush hour. Whether he's truly discourteous or merely oblivious is difficult to discern, but you can be sure that the passengers around him are silently expressing their polite indignation, perhaps by shooting a grimaced look at his bulbous head.
Slowly Growing Deaf
The ubiquity of the iPod and its brethren has ushered in a new generation of idiots who are too stupid to realize that loud music = hearing loss. Not only that, this portable music (r)evolution has flooded our trains with idiots sporting low quality headphones that not only blast their shitty music into their unsuspecting eardrums, but also into the surrounding air as a tinny, but somewhat recognizable drone. It's never certain whose earphones are blasting what noise, but the art of stereotyping can be of some use.
For example, guys with beards and/or long hair are probably listening to that fucking awful power metal (redundancy alert) that you hear, and the would-be Cellphone Girl is listening to the diabetes-inducing bubblegum pop whilst reciting the dance moves she saw on Much. As always, every stereotype has exceptions, which means the black guy wearing Sean John is the one listening to Toby Keith. Now that's juxtaposition.
The Token Retarded Person
First of all, the word "retarded" is not offensive, it is a medical term. The word "retard" is offensive, and the people who strive to be politically correct are usually retards. Now that that's out of the way...
He might be visibly retarded through his physical appearance, or maybe through his actions. Either way, it becomes obvious fairly quickly that the guy persistently rocking back and forth or making loud squawking noises is not normal, whatever that is. After a few minutes of pretending not to be distracted, you start hoping that he'll get off the train soon. Thus, a series of questions in your mind is ignited:
"God damnit, when is he leaving?"
"Does he know which stop is his?"
"Does he know which stop we're at right now?"
"Does he even know that he's on the train??"
"Is he even aware of his own existence, let alone the hordes of other passengers who he is annoying the crap out of??"
"God damnit, when is he leaving?!?"
Then he spits on your shoe and then explodes into uncontrollable laughter.
The Drunk Guy at 4pm
He may or may not be Native and he may or may not be homeless. The only sure thing is that he's drunk and you can smell him from across the car. He's swaying to the power ballad in his mind like a ship on an increasingly violent sea, even when the train isn't moving. His jacket is flapping open just enough to reveal the unconspicuous paper bag stuffed in his inside pocket, not that you needed any more evidence. As his final gift to the train, he staggers towards the door and vomits on the floor, causing the normals to migrate away. After he leaves, someone informs the train operator that there's vomit in car 2, and they stop the train and evacuate the car. Thanks Drunk Guy, I'm now 10 minutes late for my hair cut.
The Token Insane Person
He is harder to identify than the Token Retarded Person, but those two have many commonalities. The quintessential similarity is the uncertainty factor. Once identified, you never really know what the Token is going to do. "Is he going to talk to me?" "Is he going to spit on me?" "Is he going to rape me?? On public transit? Oh god, what kind of monster is this?!?"
He disembarks before you do because crazy people don't live in the suburbs. Then you tell all your suburb friends that you were almost raped on public transit.
Last, but not least,
The Guy Who Seems a Little Off and Turns Out to be an Insane Racist
Our final rider is based on an experience of mine and is more of an archetype, versus a stereotype.
I was sitting with my Asian friend Sam, reading a Chem textbook, when the guy standing next to me says "that's a good subject."
I say, "Umm.. yeah, it's not bad." I hadn't looked at him yet, so I thought he might be a chem prof or something, so I didn't want to say what I really thought about chem.
"Yeah, it's a really good subject. Is that a textbook? Because I don't have any textbooks, but I bought some books from Chapters."
Ok, that seems reasonable, I guess. "Oh yeah."
"Are you in university?"
"Yeah." Fuck dude, leave me alone.
"I didn't go to university, but you know what the problem with university is?"
"What?" I really hope he's sane. Please, let him be sane.
"Foreigners. There are too many god damn foreigners in university and they haven't gone to high school in Canada, so they're behind everyone else and it takes them forever to catch up..."
"Uh.." Okay, this motherfucker is grade A not sane. This is why I didn't point out that international students were probably near the top of their class in their superior high school systems and have learned English in order to study at a North American institution.
"...They're just a drain on society. Immigrants are a drain on society. Drain on society... Drain on.. drain on society because they didn't do high school here..."
And he got stuck in an infinite loop, repeating variations of "drain on society" as he walked off the train.
Conclusion
I've tried to cover a large number of stereotypes here, but I'm sure I've forgotten some. Please, fill in the ones I forgot, and share your own transit stories.
