“Everyone Switched To Another Train”: 40 Times Journeys On Public Transport Took A Wild Turn

A few years back I took public transport to work one Friday so I could meet up with friends after work. I always drive into work and this was the one time I deviated from the norm.
I was waiting for the bus and a man came and stood by me carrying a cardboard box. The box started rustling and suddenly a tiny, furry face popped out the top. I couldn't hide my delight at seeing a kitten at sad o'clock on the commute and squealed like a little girl. The man asked if I'd like to take the kitten - "it's a nice cat" he said.
I couldn't resist and he handed the box to me along with some sachets of cat food and off he went. I boarded the bus and tried to figure out what I was going to do with the kitten once I got to work. I worked in operating theatres at the hospital at the time so that was interesting! Hid her in the staff kitchen until my mom could come and pick her up for me. Still got the little fur face.

I was having a really bad day and decided to leave work early. Midway through subway ride home I'm self-consumed and on the verge of tears when a man gets on with a boombox, a microphone and an unidentifiable black box. He then proceeds to serenade the train with the Michael Jackson song "Black or White." He starts dancing and holding up the microphone to random passengers to sign the chorus. The next thing you know a sing-along has begun and I can't stop laughing with the stranger sitting next to me.

For the grand finale he presses a button on the black box and BOOM! Bubble machine - bubbles everywhere.

He got off at the next stop.

I once saw a pigeon standing on the platform for the Chicago L train like he was waiting for the train. The train pulled up and the pigeon (perfectly lined up with the door) got on the train, walked calmly down the center isle to the next door, then got off at the next stop.

Weird, but awesome.

Three 6'6" transvestites having an animated discussion with a 4 year old girl and her mother on the Subway about makeup... during rush-hour.

After the Rally to Restore Sanity, caught a train to get lunch with some friends. Every car is packed, but the one we get on seems particularly boisterous.

An old man with a bible on his lap is spouting off about gays, and their detrimental effect on society. To cover up his malarkey, a guy in his full fatigues is leading the entire train in whatever song he can think of; 'Row Your Boat', 'Wheels on the Bus', '99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. During '99 Bottles, to keep everyone singing, he starts doing a s******r dance for the old guy, to which the whole car goes crazy. It was loud, cramped, and beautiful. The old fella gets off at the next stop.

As everyone is basking in the afterglow of his perfectly human moment, the guy says rather directly "I ship out to Iraq on Monday." Silence fills the car.

We happened get off at the same stop he did. Every person who got off with us either shook his hand or gave him a hug.

Hope he came home safe.

I have many tales from Miami MetroRail but this is my favorite: During a busy weekday rush hour a man in a suit boards the train and sits next to me. I think, "Great. A normal person sitting next to me for once." He's clean-cut, nothing out of the ordinary. A few minutes into the ride, he opens his briefcase and pulls out half a sandwich. I think, "Dammit. Wish I had brought a snack." The man meticulously chews the middle and corners of this sandwich leaving it in the shape of a phone....he then talks on his sandwich phone for the rest of our journey.

I got up to offer am older lady my seat at the bus station, she yelled at me to sit down then proceeded to sit on my lap, it was an odd day.

An older man wearing a dress and a hat with tiny american flags on toothpicks attatched to it.

it was a frilly pink dress and no, he wasn't trying to look like a woman.

he looked like a 50+ year old man in a pink dress.

on the plus side, he was quiet and didn't cause any trouble.

i would rather sit next to him than the cr**kheads who rode the bus.

Girl, maybe mid-twenties on a Friday night, blacked out - all black clothes, jet black hair, black eye shadow, black nail polish, etc. She's just standing there holding onto a pole and all of the sudden a mouse or rat crawls out from her bust and crawls up to her shoulder. She gives the thing a kiss and it runs back down and up her shirt sleeve.

I'm on the bus yesterday, and sitting across from me is a guy who's probably 50 years old or so, and he is absolutely COVERED with prison tattoos. skulls on his forehead, teardrops, fangs under his mouth, spiderwebs on his cheeks and neck, eyeballs on the backs of his hands, a huge 13 right on his throat, the virgin mary on one forearm, and all of them obviously done in prison, faded, with terrible lines. all in all, a pretty scary looking guy.

so we get to a stop, and the girl next to me gets off the bus. "hey, she forgot her purse," says tattoo guy, pointing under the seat next to me. i look down, see the purse, and hand it over to him, and he jumps off the bus, looks at her, and screams out, "HEY! YOU! YEAH, YOU, STOP! HEY!"

she looks kind of nervous and keeps walking, and he starts running after her, screaming, "HEY! STOP! HEY!" she doesn't stop, so finally he screams, "YOU FORGOT YOUR PURSE!" she stops, he hands it over, and he runs back and gets back on the bus.

"I dunno what the f**k her problem was, man," he says. "That b***h looked at me like I was some kind of f*****g freak."

One time while riding the bus home from school a little later than usual, I sat down and almost immediately a man came up to me and just took my right shoe off and walked away. It happened really quickly so I didn't have time to react, but the person sitting next to me informed me that he rode the bus everyday at this hour and that he would return the shoe shortly. Thought it was rather odd.

As the doors on the Metro are closing, I notice this 30-something year old suit guy sprinting towards the train. He full on dives headfirst into the train, his feet passing through just before the doors closed Indiana Jones style. He stands up, dusts himself off, and says "Whoa... thought I was gonna miss that one" to which the entire train just bursts out laughing. Funniest thing I've ever seen after taking the D.C. Red line for nearly a decade.

I went to the Imbolc festival a few years ago in Marsden, a village up on the moors in West Yorkshire. We caught the train to avoid trying to find parking. As usual it was fabulous - with parades, fire spinners, the fight between Jack Frost and the Green Man and various musicians including a mariachi marching band (from Barnsley, I believe).

We saw the mariachi band (still in full costume) on the overcrowded platform - they were catching the same train as us out of Marsden after the event - and we ended up in the same carriage where they entertained everyone with renditions of Seven Nation Army, Pigbag and Hey Baby. The train was literally bouncing with people dancing and singing. Best journey ever.

Every once in a while I see this guy on the bus and he's the most hardcore biker looking guy fully equipped with a zz top beard and everything. But he carries a neon green purse. And he struts with it. Like I mean he owns it.

Once, I was sitting across from a guy eating out of a small hagen daaz ice cream container. He didn't have a spoon, and was using his thumb. After each thumb of ice cream, he'd let it melt in his mouth and then spit it on the floor. Everyone switched to another train car at the next station.

On the bus, a high homeless lady started doing assisted flips (using the hand straps on either side of the bus) while freestyle rapping about how young people should love each other more. There was a couple who clearly liked each other, but weren't at the stage that they had admitted it yet. She kept telling them to hold hands, and composed them some personalized beat poetry.

Halloween at 1am, some guy dressed as Borat gets on the bus, hits on all the girls in typical Borat style, and then passes out in the corner.

Vancouver buses and skytrains can be pretty odd sometimes.

And this is actually one that my husband told me: he got on the bus after work and found a seat. Nearby there was a dirty homeless-looking dude with headphones in his ears, bobbing his head to music. He seemed really into it. My husband looked down, followed the wire, and discovered that his headphones were actually plugged into a carrot.

A weird homeless man wanted to sell me a UFO. I was thinking "How bad could this be? It's probably a bunch of bicycle parts arranged into a disk." But instead, he pulled out a Frisbee made of tinfoil. Hell, for five bucks it was worth it.

I was taking the train from the Bronx down to Coney Island and we had a pigeon that rode the whole way.

It just chilled out under a seat and when we got to the last stop it hopped off the train and flew off.

Pretty smart actually, it's a five mile flight.

Sitting on the Red Line and the lady across from me is eating something out of a cardboard box. No big deal, until she finishes whatever is in it and then starts tearing off bits of the box an casually eating the pieces.

I was riding on the TTC subway (Toronto Transit Commission for all you non-Canadians), one day and across from me I noticed that there was this Asian man sitting with a live chicken in an opaque white plastic bag. I didn't see much except for the chickens' claws and this guy was trying to calm the chicken down as he put it underneath this seat because it kept clucking every time the train lurched. At the next stop this young woman goes to sit down beside him and she accidentally kicks the poor chicken and you just hear a big "BAKAWK!" and it startled her, and the guy said "No, no it's ok, it's just a chicken" and the look on her face was a priceless "WTF?".

You see some really strange things happen on the TTC.