The Faces of Metro

The staple Metro face is a depressed face.  No hint of a smile.  Eyes are focused on the floor.  No one ever looks directly at anyone else.  Well, no one wants to get caught doing it, anyway (more on that later).  One group of people who have not yet developed a Metro face is children.  Give them time.  Infants, on the other hand, usually have a good Metro face.

Metro police officers are exceptionally good at the Metro face.  They have to be because they don’t want you to know that they observe everything about you.  Metro employees have the best Metro face.  They can look directly at you and you can’t tell what hand they are holding.

Then there’s the Tourist face.  Eyes are wide open in amazement, or squinting to decipher the Metro train map.  They don’t bother to try to blend in, because they know they can’t. 

Every once in a while, you’ll catch someone staring at you.  No one means to do it, but everyone does it.  What a person does once caught is what separates the creeps from the normals.  The normals will quickly glance away, and that’s it.  When you look back at them, they’re looking somewhere else.  The creeps are a different breed.  They either keep staring at you, or when you look them off and look back, they’re staring at you again.  I find both to be extremely creepy.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget the “what you lookin’ at” face.  Yeah, You.  What?  What?

What?

There is the Clueless face.  This poor sucker doesn’t know where he/she was, is now, or is going.  Even if they get precise, accurate, written directions, they still look completely lost.

Some of the same faces are on Metro buses, especially the Tourist face.  Many Metro bus riders appreciate having scenery to look at, and take full advantage.  I love the “I’m so glad I made it on this bus” face.  That, my friends, is one of the biggest grins you’ll ever see!

The newest face – and the one with the most dire implications – is the Android face.  This face angles downward, expressionless, at 45 degrees and is sometimes bathed in a soft blue glow while the eyes are intensely focused on an e-mail or a game or pornography (or so I’ve heard).  Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before someone meanders directly into the path of a large moving object because they are so engrossed in their own little world.  Thanks to the Android face, pickpockets are having a ball fleecing untold numbers of blue-light zombies every day.

Finally, there is the Pretending to Be Asleep face.  Only a few commuters are brave enough to actually risk catching a few winks on a Metro train or bus.  The vast majority of Metro “sleepers” are just trying to relax or to escape their particular reality for a few hard-earned minutes.  If you commute, think about it – when is the last time you missed your stop because you had dozed off?

As for me, my Metro face is a combination of what-you-lookin’-at and thousand-yard stare, with a lot of freestyle head-bobbing mixed in for good measure.  I do not yet own a Droid.  If you stare at me, I’ll stare back until we arrive at my station or yours.  I have never, ever lost a staredown – except once with Mike Tyson, but he wasn’t really staring at me.  I walked by him in Atlantic City the night before he fought Larry Holmes; I have never seen a stare like that in my life or ever since.  Mr. Tyson would have no problem riding the Metro, and I would feel sorry for any creep who stared at him.

I don’t know where that came from, but now seems like a pretty good time to end this piece….

[Author's note:  On May 1, 2011 I became a smartphone user.  I have a T-Mobile myTouch 4G Android smartphone.  I love it!]