Urban Foibles: Ghost World

Just as I started a campaign of virulent hatred against the pigeons of Nathan Philip Square, I saw these two having a moment in the setting sun.

I hate doing or saying anything about this, and hate even more what this might say about our baser instincts, but hating on something as a collective act of solidarity often bring people closer together than anything else might.

I was on the crowded west bound platform of Bloor Station today, standing really close to a stock type of downtown westend -- black blazer, ironic cap, girl-jeans-worn-by-a-guy, the works -- as uncomfortably as I do when I have to stand that close to anyone, let alone a walking cliche of a human being. The train arrived, doors popped open; we rushed in and settled across from each other, which was when I caught a whif of library musk. I turned around, and saw an elderly man with a beret, reading, or rather liberally sniffing, a yellowing pocket-sized romance, his porous nose forcing its way into the binding.

Bizarre things seem to happen a lot around me, and in any case I'm often the only one who finds it funny. I jerked my head the other way, came face to face to a stern woman in her 50s, and played contortionist gymnastics with my facial muscles as I tried really hard to pretend that nothing was happening and I was not crazy. Then I noticed the westender with a smirk on his face, gazing through his aviators (pretty atrocious eh?) at the old man; then glancing in my direction, his faint suggestion of a smile broke into something altogether more tangible.

Thus is how we bonded for a moment, two people unlikely to have liked each other and to like each other in the future, accomplices in hatred and contempt; I was Thora Birch to his ScarJo. Meanwhile the old man sniffed on, unaware of his role in this meaningful moment.