Things our parents teach us...

While travelling out to West London for a Thanksgiving soiree, I hopped across the platform and onto a train without checking the destination.

Luckily for me, there's a scrolling reader inside which will tell you the train's destination, etc. Living now 4 years in London, I'm quite accustomed to such things. So this very nice looking man in a harsh, frustrated tone, interrupts my reading with "Well, where are you trying to go?"

I was a bit startled... I hadn't asked him for anything, I was just minding my own business... but I could see despite his irritated aire that he was attempting to be helpful...

"South Harrow."

"Well, which train goes to South Harrow?"

"The Piccadilly line..." (the train we were on)

"Does anyone know if this branch goes to South Harrow?" He bellowed out across the train... What is he doing? I thought to myself, but he's being helpful...

"Oh and by the way, there's an old German proverb my mother used to tell me... which translates as 'Red and green must never be seen.' So really, what you're wearing is really a fashion faux pas."

I felt my eyes bulge out of my head... I bought a new apple green coat and I had bright pink gloves and scarf on... not red...

In my flustered state I stammered back "But they're complementary tones..." but I knew this was right and they were in the same tonal spectrum...

"No..." his word was elongated and dripping with disdain...

"Well... I'm an American and we do whatever we want..." I remembered an excerpt from The Bell Jar where Esther explains how if you do anything as if that's the proper way it should be done, like eating salad with one's fingers, then no one would fault you for it... they won't say a word to you...

He paused for a moment, as if checking a mental register...

"Yes..." with almost as much disdain. I moved away to the middle of the carriage... not overly conspicuously, since I hadn't sat down to begin with, and I giggled to myself.

I wanted to say something rude to him. Something to make him know he'd lost. To show who was the real intellectual superior. I wanted him to feel ashamed for how he'd talked to me, but something held me back...

I thought to myself... "My mother taught me that opinions are like assholes... everyone has them but no one wants to hear them."

I wanted to see the look on his face as I shoved his comment about my coat back in his face. This man who wasn't even wearing a color, but dressed in grey and black.

But, alas, my mother also taught me manners, so I straightened my giggly face and waited patiently for my stop and turned the other cheek.