Vancouver and All That….. The Skytrain

My next adventure in Vancouver, following the shock of the parkade rates, was an incident the following evening.

I had been working non-stop packing and cleaning at the condominium and decided to call it a day at about 10:00p.m. Son number one called me from downtown and offered to come and collect me from Burnaby in the car. I assured him there was no problem and he could pick me up at Burrard station downtown from the Skytrain.

Off I went with friend Bob who drove me to the Metro station and I boarded the Skytrain after just a few minutes wait. Settling myself down in the middle coach, to the rear, I took out some reading material (don’t even remember what it was).

At the following station a couple of men boarded the train. One was tallish, a little on the chubby side with a round face and totally out of it – drunk as a lord. The other was much quieter but seemed prepared to follow up on any remarks that came non-stop from the drunken one.

When they stepped onto the train, the first thing the drunken lord shouted was “Well, there’s grandma and how’s grandma this evening? I nearly died, but I am not sure whether it was because of fear or outrage. Outrage that apparently I looked my age – how dare they! Hadn’t I been told dozens of times that I didn’t look my age? The lesser drunken lord made his way to behind my seat and sat down to peer over my shoulder to see what I was reading, while there was a stream of unending grandma remarks coming from the drunken lord who had parked himself, thank goodness, by the door. There were no abusive remarks uttered, but I slowly started to get quite concerned because I was not sure where it all would end.

I sat rigidly staring at my book, not giving them the satisfaction of even recognizing the grandma tirade and I could see the three young girls in front of me showing a bit of concern.

Having received no joy in getting any reaction from me, the two men suddenly disappeared down to the other end of the car, and started on another subject. I relaxed a little, but not for long, because they soon came back and started on about grandma again. All of a sudden, one of the young girls sitting opposite to our drunken lord let him have it.

“For f…….. sake why don’t you just shut up?” she yelled at the top of her voice. “Leave her alone”. (Grandma, that is).

Just as she was about to hurl further rage in his direction and I think, if necessary, get up and hit him, we drew up at a station, the doors opened and there was a couple of Skytrain policemen. Never was I or anyone else in that car so thankful as they yanked the drunken lord out of the car onto the station platform.

The young girls in front of me immediately turned to make sure that I was OK, and I assured them with a forced smile that I was a tough old bird and would survive. They were not to know that I had a very heavy handbag at the ready at all times, and would have lashed out with all my strength if the drunken lord and his mate had approached me physically.

We concluded that, unbeknown to us, someone at the other end of the car must have called for help and there was definitely a communal sigh of relief when the closing doors shut out our intruder.

What a journey. Obviously I had been living in the past and had expected the journey to be calm and uneventful. Fat chance!