Here’s the scenario. The seats on NJ Transit are arranged in rows of twos and threes. They fill up in the same method: Window of 3, Window of 2, Aisle of 3, Aisle of 2, Middle of 3. The first four seats fill up without incident; if commuters can go through the day without any human contact, so much the better. But no one can get to that fifth seat because Aisle of 3 guy is in the way. You’d think he’d just slide over when someone comes hunting for that last seat. But instead, he BUNDLES UP HIS POSSESSIONS, STANDS UP, SHIFTS INTO THE AISLE, PULLS THE TAILS OF HIS COAT WITH HIM, SUCKS IN HIS GUT SO THE FIFTH GUY CAN SQUEEZE PAST IT, AND DROPS BACK IN HIS SEAT, SPILLING HIS POSSESSIONS, COAT TAILS AND GUT. This takes upwards of a minute to do, during which time everyone else stuck in the aisle waits their turn to get past this standing guy and reach the next available fifth seat. These are people that routinely step through the puddle of urine rather than waste a second by going around it, and they’re taking all this time just to keep their non-middle seat.
To go through so much effort, just to stick someone else with a seat they don’t want, seems rather immature. But it’s only natural, because the focus of the immaturity is the most dreaded vehicular sitting position ever: the hump.
From living a childhood with a station wagon, I know all about the hump. With the exception of a drunken Santa lap, no seat was as universally despised as the hump. The front seats had the shoulder harness seat belts that made you feel grown-up, you could reach the radio, and Mom/Dad was right there. A front seat was always desirable, even that middle front seat where most cars have the transmission stick. The flip out seat by the trunk (traditionally called 'the way back') could be even better than the front. Those seats faced backwards, and you could see all the traffic going by, not to mention all the exhaust your wood-paneled carbon monoxide machine belched out. The regular back seats by the windows were fine, since you had control of a window. It’d be years before you had arm strength enough to actually crank down one of those babies, but looking out of them was enough at the time.
The hump had none of these seat advantages. You had no window, no radio, no view, no nothing. You didn’t even have a retractable seat belt, just that two foot long strip of nylon with a clunk of metal at the end. And if that long end wasn’t jammed in the crack of the seat, the other end would be, and you’d have to tie it around the short end of the window seat's seat belt. And the little bastard in the window seat would always complain that you were messing with his seat belt, which he really shouldn’t have because he had a window to look out of and had no reason to focus on the poor wretch next to him.
Every family has epic wars fought over the wretched hump. When three kids went towards the back doors, you could pinpoint right where the battle would be. There’d be two kids going for one door, and one going for another. If you were in the group of one, you were home free. Window all to yourself, as well as an ashtray, although all you did was flip it back and forth and get your fingers caught in there. But if you were in the group of two, it would get ugly.
These battles couldn’t be won with speed, since the first person to the door would be heave-hoed into the hump by the second. A strength battle is out of the question, since kids are nothing but sacks of fat with baby teeth. The battle, by default, went verbal. Hump rhetoric had to be used. “I was on the hump on the way over, so you have to be there on the way back,” was the standard argument. Successful but by no means debate-ending rebuttals include “I’m always on the hump!”, “You've got gum and I don't so I don't have to sit on the hump!", "You got cooties all over the hump!", "Shove it!" and the last resort, "Mom!" Many crucial debate skills were gleaned from hump debacles. Memory skills were sharpened by remembering seat placement from months and months back. Mathematical evidence of one particular hump ride being longer and thus worth two corresponding hump rides for the other person were used. This was very advanced for children who had to take their shoes off to count past ten.
Invariably, this ended up with the family pecking order showing up. The youngest kid would be perennially stuck on the hump. If he didn’t like it, well, it’s not like he could take on any of his big brothers.
I think this is the problem on the train every day; it's full of non-oldest children who don't want to go through it again. It's like the beaten kid growing up to beat his kids, only on a much more unimportant basis.
I don't have this huge anti-hump bias. I'm not setting up any shrines in my apartment to the hump, but I don't cringe at the thought of sitting there for half an hour. Maybe it's because I'm nicer to strangers than most, or that I'm a more well-adjusted member of society. Plus I'm the oldest, and it's no fun to shove them face first in the hump if they're not a family member.
It’s more appalling to me that people go so far out of their way to give a minor bad thing to someone else. It's ignoring a box of tissues by your desk and walking across the room to blow your nose in the tie of a stranger. An aisle seat’s not that much better than the hump. You’ve got an armrest, true, but there’s always a conductor or another hump seeker walking it, so your elbow gets accidentally whacked more times than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at a ceiling fan convention. You can leave your seat easier, but it’s not like there’s a drink car to go to. The simple act of uprooting yourself just so someone can pass by should enough of a discouragement to just give it up and scoot over, but most commuters are determined to suffer the pain of moving just so the other guy gets the pain of the hump. And since this only happens on the last two or three stops, it’s not even like you’ll be squished for too long.
By only the tiniest percentage, it’s better for someone to stand up rather than slide over. This doesn’t factor in the public spectacle you become when you do this. You wouldn't wipe the dog doo you stepped in on someone's new drapes if your parents were in the room watching. With the spectacle, this act of cruelty should have been long extinct.
But since everyone does it, there’s no shame in it. If everyone at work bought a box of Girl Scout cookies but you, you'd feel like a creep. But if everyone else blew the little girl's dad off, you wouldn't have a problem doing the same. This is stupid. When I’m in this hump situation I always slide in. It doesn’t happen to me much, since going into New York I’m one of the last stops and I’m always that fifth guy, and coming back from New York I’m the first one on the train so I can get a window seat and skip the moral dilemma entirely. But in the rare cases when I'm in Aisle of 3, I scoot in. I try thinking ‘random act of kindness’ and hope the guy getting the better seat notices I’m giving him the good seat.
In the four months I’ve taken the trains regularly, plus the six months previous I was taking them sporadically, only one guy has noticed. He didn’t thank me or smile or even give me eye contact (this is New York), but as we were getting off the train, he let four or five people cut in front of him in line. Of course, I was right behind him, so the kindness hurt me, but kindness that bites me in the butt is kindness nonetheless.
I hardly ever see anyone else do it. When I do, I can immediately peg them as commuting rookies. Foolish novices who don't know it's acceptable to let this bit of evil and immaturity run free in them. Luckily no one ever gives out cake on these trains, or else the entire train would be complaining that their piece was ugly and wouldn’t taste as good.
Last week was my final NJ Transit commute, and I bid the hump dilemma goodbye. I'll be taking the PATH in from Jersey City, which are subway cars where all seats are valuable, even the three and four seat humps. God bless unity.
Plus, just getting a seat on a PATH car, hump seats included, is better than being one the schmoes who have to stand. Since no one's on the PATH with their mom, the standers can all shove it.