when the clock strikes thirty-seven-teen

I took V-8 into the city last Friday to get her transit pass; we took the metro as part of our way to get home, in the early afternoon.

There was a tall heavy solid looking guy who was singing a Bob Marley song a few seat sections away from us. We were on the metro with him for five or six stops. By the third he started an encounter with someone else, another biggish guy who was seated; they got into an argument over what I couldn't make out. As we were pulling into a station they started fighting and at that station practically the whole metro car emptied out as none of us wanted to be a part or witness to this. Fortunately for this, V-8 was mostly looking at me, and not at them; and their fight was two seat sections away from us, so we were not in imminent danger, but I had us exit at that station also just in case things progressed further.

It turns out that the guy who had been singing also exited at that station, but the guy who had been sitting, stayed on that metro.

The next metro came three minutes later and we got home without a problem.

Since I started working in the city back in Sept, 2011, taking transit every weekday, I have encountered people with evident mental disability perhaps only a handful of times while taking transit. Of the thousands of times I've been on a bus, metro or train, this episode of a fight was the first time I had ever been a witness to a fight like this. It is too bad that it had to be this super rare occasion that I happened to have V-8 with me.