CTA Tattler

There must have been something nasty on the seat. Ick.

I was unfortunate enough to nearly sit in one of these seats. I say nearly because the stench and sight of human feces stopped me dead in my tracks. My flashbacks have not yet subsided.

I can only guess what that ick might have been. Was it one of those upholstered seats, with the seat wet with some sort of unidentifiable yet horrendous substance?

I didn't see anything nasty on the seat. And I didn't smell anything nasty. No puddles under it. As your intrepid CTA reporter, I really wanted to do a more thorough investigation, but even I have to draw the line somewhere. ;-)

Sometimes people are just paranoid. It's entirely possible that something yucky was/has been in that seat, but come on, it's the red line. It's one big rolling public toilet. What's new?

Always keep the newspaper handy.

Now if you really want to gross yourself out, just think about all of the public handrails, door knobs that are lathered with unmentionable substances that you TOUCH and go on to apply to your person. Ew.

This brings me back to 1994, when I happened to be on the "T" in Boston (their version of the el). There was a very large, smelly man with several garbage bags of stuff with him, and his pants had slipped down far enough that a good portion of his naked ass was on the seat. He was still on the train when I got off, and I felt bad that I could not warn the next person who would sit in that seat. And I wonder how many similar seats I have sat in in my 19 year public transportation career. The mind reels.

And it must have been PRETTY bad for 3 people to warn you!

Makes me want to carry around a big pump-top bottle of Purell hand sanitizer and use it every three minutes. And pass it around to everyone else.

A few weeks ago, a woman and her friend got on the train. Woman sat next to me, and her friend stood even though there were plenty of available seats. After a few stops, the woman asked her friend why she was standing with all the available seats in the area. She said, "A few weeks ago I was on the train, and a bum pulled out his penis on a crowded train and urinated in a big arc from the seats on one side of the train on to the seats on the other. So I no longer sit on the CTA."

I always heard that the jump seat is for the conductor and that's why you aren't supposed to sit there. But of course everyone does anyway. And now with the canned voices announcing the stops, you hardly ever see a conductor, anyway. I wonder if that's what they were warning you about.