Train folk
After a wonderful day in Sydney catching up with friends, family, and watching Christopher Hitchens be generally stupendous, the partner and I caught a very late train home to Newcastle. This train ride takes between 2 1/2 and 3 hours and after a long day in the city can be uncomfortable and sometimes a little concerning – a lot of people enjoy drinking on the train or using it as a place to sleep off their day/night of drinking.
When we were about 20 minutes from home, a man with a large bottle of alcohol covered in a brown paper bag in one hand, and an iPhone in the other, came over to us. He asked in a drunken and slow voice if he could borrow a phone as the battery had died on his. He was very polite however there was something quite unnerving about him. A few weeks ago, I allowed a drunken lady at the train station (at 8 in the morning, mind you) to borrow my mobile, even though I am a poor student and credit is like gold. She chatted with her friend for around five minutes with burps in between and a complete disregard for the credit she was wasting. Needless to say, I was burned. As a result I was immediately wary of this man and my partner looked quite uncomfortable too. This led to me lying and saying that I didn’t have my phone on me, and that my partner and I are students and don’t have much credit on his phone. I apologised profusely and felt really quite bad but at the same time, not bad enough to lend a phone. I must admit I was expecting him to be quite angry however he stayed calm. His eyes betrayed him and I could sense that he was angry and was judging us quite harshly.
He started asking what we are studying and where we lived. We told the truth about the degrees but not where we lived. He told us that his wife studied law like I am currently. He asked about our day and why we were in Sydney, and in order to be polite we asked him what he had been doing. It was a darned scary conversation as he appeared to be working up to something; yet, he wished us well in our studies and said he was sorry for making us feel uncomfortable.
As he left the train he gave us a flyer for the art show he had been to during the day where one of his friends had shown and sold some paintings. He told us that he will be showing his work in a gallery one day. He then hopped off a few stations before ours.
The more I think over this the worse I feel. After all of the fear we felt he appeared to be a genuine man who was just drunk. I immediately judged him as train-folk and assumed would get upset and angry and swear at us. However there is a good chance the discomfort we experienced was useless and led to us being unfriendly and uncharitable.
I am having trouble discerning whether we were unreasonable, or whether this is something a lot of people would have done.
Would you have lent him your phone?
Tags: alcohol, awkwardness
May 24th, 2010 at 4:17 am
since i have a plan with unlimited calls, yes i would have. if i was still on credit i wouldn’t. maybe i would have asked who he needed to call and why? im not sure. but i would have made the same judgements as you at first.
May 24th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Yeah, I think if I was still on a plan I would have been more open to it. I do feel bad about this – I let my fear take hold in a situation and I don’t feel proud of that.
I guess next time I will be kind and not such a dick