Tonight on the B train on my way home from a hair appointment, I spotted one last seat available at the end of the car so I scurried to go sit down. The free seat was next to what I would normally consider a normal subway neighbor: she was quiet, had a bag of Christmas wrapping paper with her and didn’t smell of anything horrific. After claiming my seat, I quickly settled into my book and carried on reading until we hit the Manhattan Bridge.
I wasn’t interrupted by the breathtaking views of Manhattan as we left the city, but rather my subway neighbor who had just begun FLOSSING HER TEETH. I am not even kidding you. What’s worse than her flossing her teeth (audibly by the way), she used the same piece of floss over and over again and wiped her floss findings on a napkin on her lap before returning the floss back to her mouth for another hunt. She must have carried on for at least five minutes, which feels like an eternity when you are sitting next to this person and she could be easily flicking her teeth guts all over your freshly coiffed hair. She finally wrapped up her cleaning around Atlantic Avenue at which point I had already made a break for a new seat.
While I have definitely seen my fair share of shocking behavior on the subway, I find this to just be weird. As someone who had clearly just bought four rolls of Seasons Greetings and Noel wrapping paper, she probably cares about appearances yet seemed perfectly comfortable flossing her teeth in public. On a subway—you know, one of the the cleanest places in all of NYC. Where else would you floss?
