Sunday, &%$*ing Sunday

WARNING: EXPLICIT LANGUAGE




(This warning of course has never stopped anyone from scrolling down in the history of the internet)

I rode the subway home after a busy Sunday with a few friends.  End of the weekend depression was pawing at me.  Then, down at the other end of the car, an old woman got on a phone and started yelling.

"FUCK", she said.  "FUCK korean korean korean FUCK". Now I don't want you to misunderstand and think that this little old lady had a penchant for the finer things the English language has to offer.  Instead you should understand, (and many of you certainly have experience), that when spending a prolonged period of time in a foreign country it's always wise to pick up their very worst swear words.  Knowing them is a little like knowing that when a dog wags it's tail it's happy and when it lowers it's tail it is looking to bite you in the throat.  Body language can sometimes get lost in translation, but let me tell you that if you hear 'shiball' in Korea somebody's angry.

Now this woman has some stamina.  She was reading the script for Casino.  She is making a young Eddie Murphy proud and an old Eddie Murphy sad.  A man in a very sharp business suit gets up an confronts her.  Among other grievances I  could imagine him laying on her, there is a very young-but-not-so-young-he-can't-learn-these-words boy sitting across from her with his mother, (who was staring daggers).  Inexplicably, she repeatedly shakes his hand while continuing on the phone.  He eventually sits back down, although I don't think it was because they'd reached an accord.

The subway security show up and she gets off the phone.  By 'get off the phone' I mean she hangs up and gives the cell back to the appalled looking teen beside her, who quickly gets up and heads to a different car that doesn't know he lent his phone to the angriest grandma.

At this point I am trying to learn Korean through force of will.  The way she went on and on with security I am certain she was explaining every offense committed by whoever was on the other end of the line.  They asked her to get off for a long time with the train not moving.  Then the train started moving and they stayed on, asking her to get off.  But this woman had mastered placing 'fuck' four times in a sentence.  She was going to have no problem telling these guys 'no'.  And so they left.

Now as the security left, so too did my friends.  It fell on me to see this woman through to the end of her adventure or at least until I had to transfer to a bus in three stops.  So when she ambled off, blue over sized trousers sagging hard in the back, I waited two minutes and followed her.

I came into the next car just in time to hear her give a mighty 'SHIBALL' and see the very unamused youth, (late teens, early twenties), take his phone back.  Yes, so committed was this woman to telling someone 'fuck' that she had requisitioned another cell from another person who was morally obligated to help her and gone to town on it.  She stalked through the car, grumbling for the phones of teens like a troll.  They all refused her though, the girls with wide eyes and the boys by pretending to be very very sleepy.

It was my stop, and as I walked out of the car I watched her walk into the next one, to borrow cell phones and scream obscenities into them.

Precious memories.