On the Tube

Yesterday I witnessed a gross human stupidity. I mean, not even the lack of intelligence. I witnessed the lack of consciousness in individuals. What bothers me even more is the fact that I witnessed the stupidity of a group of 4-5 people happening at the same time.

Before I used to wonder if people possess the same level of capacity to develop their intellectual abilities and some are luckier than others to do so. Now I am convinced this is NOT the case. Now I believe some people are just born DAFT and anything constructive, logical and common sense (let alone intellectual or philosophical) is out of their realm. Call me Hitler, call me elitist, call me anything, I don't care, but read the following story and judge for yourself.

So, the accident takes place on one of the busiest London Tube Stations - Euston. It is past 5 pm and everyone hurries to catch the train and go back home. As I am about to take escalator number 3 to reach my platform, I see a huge queue of people lined up in front of me. The escalator is not working. Fine, nothing new. It happens every day somewhere on the tube.

I stand and wait my turn to move forward and go down the stairs for few seconds. The crowd hardly moves forward. I wait once again, the crowd isn't moving at all. After 5 minutes waiting in the hot tunnel (you know hot disgustingly hot the tube gets in summer, as there is no conditioning system in place), I finally came to set a foot on one of the top steps on the escalator. And again people are hardly moving in front of me. I notice that the crowd in fact isn't that big, but rather - there is someone blocking its flow.

In a minute I also hear the grunts, huffs and puffs of a young girl/woman and the accompanying sound of a heavy suitcase(s) being dragged down on the dead escalator stairs. One step, one loud grunt (clearly indicating the girl is in pain), another loud noise of a heavy suitcase down its path to being shattered. I soon realize it is 2 young girl with 3-4 heavy bags and pink suitcases on their shoulders and in their hands, possibly coming from a holiday. The same scene repeats long enough so that the enervated passengers start wondering what is happening and asking each other.

There are approximately 100 stairs (if not even more) and the ladies at the front have now passed almost half of the distance. As I stand at the higher end of the stairs, I notice that there are 4-5 men of all kinds of ages and body size standing right behind the girls, all looking in a good condition and able to help. Yet, they all just stare at the poor girls and merely wait to go down the next step once they has finished battling with it under the weight of all their luggage.

My patience runs out. I do not want to wait anymore as I just want to go home quicker. But that's not the point, I am used to queuing. After all, I live in London. I simply can't take any more the idiocracy of the people in front of me. I lean over to the right and shout: "Help the woman, for God's sake!"

At that moment, all the 20-30 people in front of me, turn around and look at me almost in amazement. Did they not notice the struggle taking place in front of their eyes?

The girls keep on fighting with their pink suitcases, the groans continue and the suitcases sound almost ready to break. I continue looking and stay shocked at the fact that NONE of those men offered their help. NONE! One of the girl makes few more noisy steps down, drops the suitcase and it breaks open. Everything is accompanied by big bangs.

She picks it up again. There are probably 3 steps remaining. Finally, some "gentleman" generously offers his help.

"Oh, would you like some help?"

Now, since he did not seem neither blind nor deaf, I pose the question - which word would you use to describe him? My choice is MOLLUSK. Fucking mollusk. Fucking useless mollusk. I regret I can't come with more colorful expression in English.

He did not take the load off her hands - he simply shared the load of the pink suitcase, carrying it along with her down the remaining 3 steps! The girl steps aside and the queue quickly resolves.

There is a pregnant young woman next to me. I need to share my frustration, so I ask her a question, expecting her to confirm my disbelief:

"Did you see what happened?" (She was looking curiously at the scene the whole time.)

"What?"

"No one helped the girl!"

She just shrugged her shoulders.


June 19, 2009, London


Where is this world heading to? Did we manage to become so disconnected from each other and so self-absorbed we can't even sympathize with pain anymore? Why do we care to see drama on the stupid gossip "celebrity" magazines when we can't feel compassionate for real suffering?