Beetle Lady on the Red Line

I was waiting for the Metro the other day, sitting on one of those
stone benches reading 1984. I'd just read a part where Winston
describes one of the men in the canteen as a "small beetlelike man"
when along came this dumpy, flat-assed middle-aged woman clutching a
coffee cup. She had the look of quiet desperation plastered across her
nondescript face. Ordinarily I would have ignored her, but having just
read the aforementioned passage I was drawn to her. I watched her
slowly pace up and down the platform. She would take small, deliberate
steps and it seemed as though her eyes never really focused on
anything. It wasn't the kind of pacing a person in a hurry does. More
like a resigned, absent minded nervous tic. Back and forth she went 5,
10, 15 times (it was off-peak, so i was sitting there for a while). It
was hugely depressing.
How does it come to that? How does someone become so small and
beetlelike? I shudder to think that one day that could so easily be me.

Posted by flow Frazao on October 14, 2003 at 04:49 PM | Permalink