how much pigeon writing is there going to be in this blog?

life knocks you down.

this isn't the most uplifting or inspirational thing i have even written, but it's t known fact. i am not one to immediately run and protect someone when they are exposed to criticism, especially when you are younger. if there is a bully on a playground, you have to learn to defend yourself. if there is a family member who insists on criticizing everything you, which there is in virtually every family, extended or otherwise, you have to learn how to keep the peace while maintaining your own voice and self-respect. when you have a job, which hopefully someday soon i will find out, i assume that your personality will not click with *everyone* in the office. these in a sense are people skills, as defined by the movie Office Space, or as i like to call it 'a documentary of my temp job.'

but there is a line. there is a line between the bully making fun of your smarts (which generally supersede their brains) and beating you up for your lunch money. their is a line between playful 'we're just family' teasing and personal attacks, and their is a line between two personality's just not meshing and blatant immaturity.

my last blog spoke about being on the outside of the circle, or the 'norm' and questioning what you are doing wrong because of your new-found isolation. sometimes, you have to reexamine what you did. sometimes, what you did was right. sometimes, you didn't do anything and it's just the natural progression of life that leaves you on the outside.

sometimes you are going through a sex change. okay perhaps that's not true for most of us. but for one transgender person on the Uptown N, it was.

it's amazing how judgmental people can be without saying anything. this person was sitting alone on a plastic molded subway bench to--at this point in the process--herself, (formerly a himself) as if being transgendered was a contagious plague. people would rather stand for the 25 minute trek from midtown to queens than sit next to a person who we all decided to label. adults were staring at her like 5-year-old children stare at their first airplane. the most amazing part was the five year olds on the train were the most mature people there, as they just went about their every day truck-playing, coloring, watch-out-the-window-at-the-tiled-walls ways. everyone else, who unbeknown to me were better than this woman, were too busy judging her to tend to their children/ipods/books. ill admit, at first glance of someone going through transition, i think everybody kind of double-takes. but after the second take, a lot of people say 'oh he/she is transgender' and move on with their lives. but this gaggle of business higherups, who were obviously making enough to be living in the ritzy Astoria, which even *i* can afford, decided to grill her, because she obviously wasn't going through enough.

for the first 20 minutes, i didn't say anything.
but the building stares turned into whispers. the whispers turned into laughter. the laughter turned into comments. and the comments turned into pissing me off. i glanced up from Klosterman's IV: a decade of curious people and dangerous ideas.' long enough to realize that i could have an absolute field day with the people who were mocking this woman, and i would. i would take both the high road and the low road. and i did.

first, the high road, because i didn't know when they were getting off of the train and i wanted them to hear this. which i assured they would because i went and blocked the door that they were standing by. i may not have a right to lecture, but they don't have a right to ignore me, and if they were going to have to hop to the other side of the platform to go downtown for an extra stop, so be it. they brought it on themselves. i kindly reminded them (in a stern/borderline yelling tone) that they are not better than anyone else on this train, including but not limited to this woman. secondly i reminded them that she was probably going through enough as it was, and she didn't need to hear their comments. then i told them that nobody else on the train wanted to hear their judgments. it was at this point that one of the guys started getting defensive and saying this was a free country. i told them that the fouding fathers would be disappointed to them. at this point someone started to sing :ee Greenwood's 'Proud to Be an American' which was distracting, but mostly hilarious. in my free speech petition, i polled the fellow yellow line passengers and asked them if 'anyone else gave a shit about what these guys have to say about virtually anything?' an overwhelming no. then i told them that even though half the children on the train could only speak greek, immaturity is a universal language and that they were setting a really fine example. then i told them that i was pissed because my book was awesome, and now because of their immaturity, i lost my page in the middle of an excerpt on the Smiths.

then the low road came. this is all more or less verbatim. and by more or less i mean more:

i told them to take their lucky brand jeans and seductive irish accents and go try and find someone to make out with at a bar, because that's what they do with their time. nobody in the group denied this. i told them that instead of judging this woman, they should go focus on the three hairs that weren't perfectly sculpted with the rest of their overly polished look. i told them that they fall short of their abercrombie hopes and dreams. i told them not to try so hard to be attractive, because their personalities will repel any girls worth their time. i told them that they are going to put alligators on the endangered species list for the sake of their gross Alligator skin shoes. and i asked them if they would like me to stare, whisper, make comments, and giggle at them for 20 minutes or if i had done enough? maybe i spent too much time working for Sirius' LGBT station.

i don't know if those jerks missed their subway stop, or the point. hell i don't even know if all of them spoke english. i don't know if they will think twice before picking on someone else. i don't know if everyone else on the train thought i was annoying, crazy, or brave (although a few of them thought i was funny which is a plus. i'm guessing they hated these hipsters, too). i do know that this woman, who dressed way better than i did already (upsetting), said she never had anyone do something like that for her before, and that her family abandoned her when she decided to make this switch.

i told her about the pigeons, and that nobody can understand what she's going through, but that to a much lesser extent, we've all been there.

be careful what you say. you never know who you are hurting, or what crazy blonde twenty something you might just piss off.

-k.