this ain't the suburbs

Recently I was enduring my lengthy commute home, with a soundtrack courtesy of my iPod. A woman got on and sat in the seat next to me. There were a fair number of people, as it was on the later end of the rush hour. She looked like she was coming from work, as she appeared dressed for work and was carrying a work-related object with her.

Just a few minutes later, through my iPod, I hear this woman grumble loudly, "Where's the KKK when you need them?"

I looked around in alarm. Did she really say that? I must have been mistaken. She said nothing else. No one else was looking around or saying anything. There's no way she said that.

Further toward the back, a group of teenage girls (who happened to be African-American) were singing songs to pass the time. They were singing them loudly.

The woman plugs her ears dramatically and starts yelling, "Can I use your walkman? I need a walkman. Can I use yours? I need to move out of this fucking country. I can't stand this fucking country anymore. Too many blacks."

I continue to ignore her because I'm pretty sure she's about to get shivved, and I don't want to be stabbed as a potential supporter of this crazy woman. I am also now incredibly disgusted and angered by the fact that she probably did, indeed, say exactly what I thought she said earlier. Should I get up and walk away? Just a few more minutes home, and I have to climb over her to get out.

"Stop looking at me! Stop looking at me, you dirty Mexican! I don't date your kind! I only date whites!" she starts yelling to the harmless Latino guy minding his own business across the aisle. Another guy, who looks Latino, looks over at her and she says very politely, "No, I don't mean you. I'm talking to that guy. I need to get out of this country." He asks her, "What country are you from?" to which she responds, "I'm from Spain and Colombia. But everyone thinks I'm Puerto Rican," she snorted in disgust. [I seriously doubt that she's ever set foot in any of those countries, particularly since she has a pretty thick local accent.]

And then she continues. "Why do these black and Mexican guys always look at me? Is it because I'm ugly? Is that why the ugly guys stare at me and want to ask me out? Am I ugly?" The not-the-dirty-Mexican guy says very nicely back to her, "No. You're not ugly. You are very pretty." And by this time, I had vaulted out of my seat and got myself far, far away from this scene that everyone was listening to.

I still can't decide whether she was just a normal type of crazy - that is, a woman on her way home from work who is just fed up and can't deal with city living so she starts spewing her innermost racist beliefs... or if she was actually crazy, like schizophrenic and not racist.