I made a girl on the train cry… oops

My school, the University of Western Ontario, is world renowned for its incredibly vapid girls, each one possessing more designer handbags than they have brain cells, and all are predictably enrolled in social science. So, suffice it to say, I’m used to dealing with stupid girls.

I thought I’d seen it all, I was wrong. I was on the train from Kingston back to Toronto, and the two girls in front of me took the cake. I had my laptop out, and I was watching Lost (it’s a very good show, by the way), trying to enjoy myself and let the trip wrap up as quickly as possible. The problem with watching TV shows with headphones on, is that unlike music, the sound isn’t at a constant volume, you’ve got quieter parts thrown in for dramatic effect, and sometimes long bits of time where not a lot is said, with music, chances are good that it’s all loud all the time, much better for drowning out conversations.

You can see where this is going, I was trying to distract myself, but unable to fully concentrate on the survivors of flight 815 because the two 18ish year old girls in front of me were having a sleepover on the train.

“Oh my god, she thinks she’s so pretty and isn’t, she doesn’t even know how to dress right, she was wearing two solid colours in the same outfit, even after I told her that you can’t do that! She’s so stupid and no one likes her.”

“Like, totally.”

That was the first full sentence I heard, it was amusingly moronic enough for me to mute my show and pay a little more attention to them. I looked through the space between the chairs to get a look at the more talkative of the two. Suffice it to say, she wasn’t good looking enough to talk the way she did.

She was about 30 pounds overweight, she was wearing a ratty denim skirt (and not “stylish ratty”, it was more akin to “welfare ratty”) over top of some black pantyhose with a two layer white shirt. The inner layer of the shirt was some manner of spaghetti string top, the outer was some loose fitting fishnet mesh. Needless to say, she was dressed like shit.

But that’s not all. I mean, it’s pretty dumb of her to be obsessed with fashion yet unable to properly dress herself, but her personal grooming was substandard, as well: It looked like she had personally used a bit too much peroxide on her hair about a month ago, she had split ends everywhere, and her roots looked painfully white trash. If that wasn’t enough, she had some weird skin condition on her back, it was red and flaky (but she was of course still exposing all of this leprosy riddled flesh to the outside world), she was pretty gross.

At any rate, her and her friend continued to spout mindless drivel for about an hour straight – at which point, the unthinkable happened: the train stopped.

The conducter’s voice came over the train PA system: “Attention ladies and gentlemen, we’re stopped for a couple of minutes while the engineer makes a visual inspection of the engine, this is just to ensure that everything is working properly, and we’ll be on our way shortly, thanks for your time” (followed by the same announcement in french).

“Oh my god, it’s a train, what could be going wrong? I mean seriously, you just follow the rails to the station, it’s not like it’s complicated!”

At that point, I had had enough, so I decided to join the conversation:

“Hey there, could you do me a favor and get off the train? I’d like to get home.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, if it were just your weight, or your ego, the train would be able to pull the weight, but the combination of the two is causing catastrophic mechanical failure.”

“Uh, what did you just say?”

“Well, in truth I just told you you were fat and think too highly of yourself, but let’s be honest here, that’s the least of your problems, I mean, just look at you: You’re a good 30 pounds overweight, and it’s pretty obvious from all the acne around your mouth that it comes from shoveling too much pizza and chips down your gullet.

That’s not your only “appearance issue, either” : you bleached your hair, what, a month ago? Judging by the roots, that is. Why is it that you still smell like peroxide? Have you not washed it since? Oh, and Let’s not forget that your hair has so many split ends it looks like you’re being erased from history like in Back to the Future. Or hey, maybe it was Michael J. Fox who cut your hair, that would explain the style, too.”

“Uh what?!”

“Sorry, I’m not done just yet, I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty funny that you spent 45 minutes “tearing into” some girl from school who you don’t like, especially given how poor a job you did, I guess ripping into other girls isn’t as easy for you as tearing apart a bag of M&Ms. Then again though, I’m sure it feels nice for you to make fun of a girl who doesn’t have to start rumours about herself swallowing just so that boys will notice.

You’ve said nothing for the past 2 hours, yet you haven’t stopped talking, and close as I can figure, you haven’t uttered a single original idea. Close as I can figure, you’re a vapid, disposable, unwanted shell of a girl, and my god what a huge shell it is.

There’s a bathroom at the back of the train, I suggest you use it to scale back on that mars bar you just ate, it would be a good habit for you to develop. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to watching Lost.”

She just stared at me for about 20 seconds. Then, in under a second flat, she broke down crying. It was terrible. Not that I felt bad, I mean it was aesthetically terrible to watch.

She did run to the bathroom though, so maybe she was taking my advice.