A few days ago during The Rains I trod to the Sapperton SkyTrain station to begin my morning commute and I discovered this message finger-painted onto the glass near where I usually stand on the platform.
One might quibble about the lack of proper punctuation but the message is nonetheless unambiguous. What I find most intriguing is what would prompt someone to:
- Feel this angry while standing on the platform of a commuter train very early in the morning (before 6:30 a.m.)
- Be moved to transfer the anger into a message written via finger on a rain-slicked sheet of glass
This leads to other questions, such as:
- What did the person feel later, when they were presumably on the train. Remorse? Regret? Catharsis? Ongoing anger?
- Would I be able to pick this person out if I suddenly found myself on the car on which the angry scribe was riding?
- Has this person written similar messages before?
- Is this act usually a one-off or just one in a series?
- Is the person–almost certainly a guy (sorry, guys, you know we’re mostly jerks) an otherwise nice fellow, entirely reasonable, and just found himself in a foul mood due perhaps to an unexpected and unpleasant event?
I am slightly sad I will never know the answers to these questions, though I’m not sure what I would do with the answers, anyway. Maybe one day I’ll make the answers up and turn it into a story called “The Messenger.”
(Probably not, though.)
