Reasons To Hate The Tube #6: Eye Contact
Courtesy of www.projects.aegee.org/
There’s an unwritten law that if broken is punishable by something so severe that no-one has ever dared break it. Exaggeration aside, we’re talking about that fleeting moment on the London Underground called eye-contact. You could be strangling a baby while playing an accordion and no-one would bat an eyelid, but catch someone’s glance for more than a millisecond and you’d think you’d just sexually assaulted them.
In the rusty metal tombs on wheels, as you fly through the heart of London, you can understand why individuals are apprehensive with sharing a moment. The sea of anoniminity is a shroud of peace and quiet. After all, who wants to share a conversation with the person’s armpit you’re squashed into. You can just imagine the small talk, “nice hair…”
Yet, with so much philosophy about how the eyes are a window to the soul you’d think we as humans would love to share our souls with strangers. Maybe it’s just the Capital’s effect? Having never lived anywhere else, maybe everyone looks at each other on buses around the country.
I do have a theory that counters this. Everyone is looking at everyone in the reflection of the glass, we’re all just too scared to admit it…
This is a continuation of a long running blog series I’ve been doing. To see the past reasons, take a look here.
Tagged: London, London Underground, One A Day, Reasons to hate the Tube, Subway, TFL, The Tube, Tube
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8 Responses to “Reasons To Hate The Tube #6: Eye Contact”
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It’s certainly one of the first things that gets flagged as ‘weird’ by my friends when they visit London. My problem is that I daydream when I’m on the Tube, and when I’m daydream I stare in a completely random direction. So I’ll often come to and find some person on the other side of the carriage giving me the evil eye for having given them the eye by accident for the last 5 minutes. I’m fairly certain this is how I will die early…
Yeah, I do the same. More worryingly is that I end up zoning out and looking at people’s crotches. It’s just the thing that’s opposite and the way my head rests…