This is my dance space, this is your dance space

Dirty Dancing
Originally uploaded by purplepaperprincess.

Today's rant comes to you fresh from the north-bound 135 bus that departed Downtown at 4.48pm this afternoon. The subject of today's diatribe is PERSONAL SPACE and, more particularly, the lack of it that seems to exist on public transportation.

Never one to start my story at the beginning, let me commence by declaring that the wintertime in Chicago is not about fashion. It's about staying warm and dry. And that's no easy task when you take into account the rain, snow, occasional sleet, and very strong winds that want to execute a smackdown on each and every one of us.

So when you rug up, at times you're bound to wear so many layers you end up looking like the long-lost cousin of The Michelin Man. And with that extra padding comes a rather awkward new way of manoeuvering in tight spaces. What would, in summertime, be a seamless and casual sashay down the bus aisle, in wintertime becomes an awkward, clumsy shuffle into seat, where you instantly become a jelly melange of coats, gloves, scarves and beanies. In short, it sucks.

So I was pissed enough that I had to stand up this afternoon on the bus, swathed in my puffy long coat and scarf, and baking under the heating vents. But then some oaf of a creature has to body slam me and basically dry hump me the whole way home. When he leaned forward and gazed out the window at Belmont Harbor and then loudly proclaimed he was on the wrong bus, I wanted to hurl him out the windscreen then and there. I think my fellow passengers would have enjoyed that too.

As it is I'm now too aggrieved to go and have a spray tan and instead, I'm having a Cab Sav. So there.