Overheard: Christmas Train Edition

If you're ever travelling within Canada, and you have the opportunity to do so on a train, I highly recommend you do. I further recommend that, if you are travelling with VIA, that you spring for their VIA One service--their version of first class.

It includes access to a separate, comfortable lounge in the station with free wifi, coffee, tea, pop, juice, etc so you don't have to stand in long lines and you're the first to board the train when it arrives. It also means that you get a decent meal on the train with wine and--here's the important part--all you can drink.

Yes. Train travel is for me.

Anyway, I had occasion to take the train home for Christmas recently and believe me when I say that there is no better time to travel first class then at the holidays. You get removed from the mouth-breathing, throbbing masses cutting you off and dragging their luggage around--which puts me into a rage at the best of times--and you get a few drinks in your system on the way; transitioning you smoothly into vacation mode and preparing your body for the binge-drinking that is to follow as you visit with various relatives and in-laws.



The only thing then, that can screw up the brilliance that is VIA One travel, is other people; which is of course exactly what happened to me.

They first interrupted the relative calm of the lounge with a sort of thundering entrance; an older couple that were somehow as large physically as they were loud. Big, greasy, white-haired people yelling at each other.

I don't mean to sound like a dick, but it seemed to me that they probably hadn't left their farm in some time. Really, they were just dirty, lumbering folks that actually referred to each other as mom and pop even though it didn't seem clear that they had any children.

People were shushing them, but they were just so fantastically ignorant of their surroundings they paid no heed. At first it was kind of amusing, I shared a laugh with the guy beside me. It was great, really. This couple was a perfect combination of crass and deaf; essentially shouting rude things to each other in a space meant for quiet and relaxation.

But then of course, the novelty wore off as people began to realize, fuck, these goons were going to be on the train with us for the next two hours.

We all sort of nervously shuffled onto the train, hoping that we wouldn't get seated near them. The reality of course, was that it didn't really matter where on the car you were seated because they were just that loud.

The fun started when a VIA employee politely told the guy that they bag he was trying to store at the front of the train would easily fit in the overhead storage compartment, a gesture she repeated for everyone who had luggage small enough to be brought to their seat on that crowded train.

From about five feet from the very polite woman, the dude yelled to his wife, "The bitch wouldn't let me put my bag in there!"

And so, given that they were actually louder than my iPod, and that no one had any choice but to hear every word they said, I decided to jot down the various gems that I overheard in the two hours that followed and created this list for you.

Be forewarned, politically correct these folks were not.

1. [discussing the woman who had just delivered a drink to them] She's an edible young girl.
2. Him: It's an hour and ten minutes til we get there.
   Her: How do you know?
   Him: I got a memory clock.
3. [discussing the man who had just walked through the train checking tickets] Do you think he's a faggot?
4. I'm horny as a house cat.
5. I'm a beef guy, eh?
6. I'm a coff-aholic, eh?
7. Are you Japanese?
8. Him: Koreans.
   Her: They're the worst.
9. I think everybody's gay.
10. Him: You do look puerto rican.
    Her: I do?
    Him: It's your green eyes.
11. He's a retarded alcoholic cripple, eh? He's an asswipe!

Not featured: a quiet but solid five minute period wherein the man dug in both his ears with the sharpened part of a pencil.