A HUMAN IDENTITY

A HUMAN IDENTITY(JANE NAMUTEBI) Along with the army of other commuters, I grab a copy of the free morning newspaper and sit rather uncomfortably on the train, at the bumpier end of the Northern Line.

I open the newspaper and an article entitled the ‘The folly of human nature’ catches my eye. After a short while, I raise my eyes briefly from my newspaper and observe a gentleman seated opposite me. He is peering over a lady’s shoulder, to read the very same article that I have been reading.

‘Newspaper Lady’ appears slightly unnerved by the heavy breathing over her shoulder and makes a deft manoeuvre to her right so ‘Mr. Curious’ can no longer do anymore visual eavesdropping. I suspect he simply wants to share in the amusement that the article has brought to most of the commuters and does not have any malicious plan to attack her.

I make this observation, but dare not reflect on whether I would have reacted differently from her, lest I expose my own human folly; a typical case of the splinter-in-her-eye-appears-much-larger-than-the-log-in-my-own syndrome.(1)

As the train arrives at Warren Street tube station, a tattoo-clad teenager boards the train and sits down beside me. He generously shares his love of heavy metal music, with me and other passengers nearby, at about one hundred decibels.

An elderly gentleman also boards the train and is clearly looking for a seat. Mr. Curious, perhaps still wallowing in rejection from Newspaper Lady, does not acknowledge the gentleman’s need for a seat. However, the teenager offers his seat to the elderly gentleman and swaggers off to the other end of the carriage.

A little girl, about three years of age, attempts to imitate Newspaper Lady’s posture, while holding a page of her mother’s copy of the newspaper. The little girl turns to look at the tattoo-clad teenager, who is not too far away from her but is now slouched against the plastic partition, near the carriage door.

Clearly fascinated by him, she addresses her mother and asks: “Why has that man drawed on his self?”

Not satisfied with the response she receives, she tugs at her mother’s coat unrelentingly and adds, “Won’t his Mummy be angry?”

Slightly flushed and appreciative of the fact that the teenager probably has not heard what her daughter has just shouted above the din, the mother gestures to her daughter to be quiet, leaving us all highly amused.

Fifteen minutes later, I arrive at Camden Town tube station and run out into the cold to join the Great British Queue. This particular queue is not for anything particularly exciting, it is just the queue for the cash machine.

There are in fact three cash machines situated side-by-side, within walking distance of this station. However, the queue has formed only in front of one of them. It is plausible that only one of the three is functioning, hence only one queue. As the article I had read about half an hour ago highlighted, human nature seems to supersede logic and this is certainly an example of such a situation.

Just to humour myself, I step out of the queue to see if either of the other two cash machines is working. I insert my card and successfully withdraw cash from the third one. It transpires that only the second one is out of service.

Within minutes a second queue forms behind me.

I try desperately hard to hide my satisfaction of not needing to stand there for half an hour, as a reward for not following the proverbial herd, but grateful for the protection afforded by a fellow commuter, when an irate teenager thinks otherwise.

In a buoyant mood from the events of the morning, I cheerfully greet my colleague and she returns an insincere smile. The reality of the daily grind dawns on me when my Outlook calendar invitation has just reminded me that I have to attend a meeting in Room 101…something about getting a heads up on pushing the envelopes.

Yes, office-speak: that unofficial dialect of the English language. Remarkably, it both unites and divides people on the premise that the subject matter to be discussed is already familiar. Heaven forbid the information should be relayed in plain English, as it might actually be intelligible. Well there is no ‘I’ in team so I suppose I had better join my esteemed colleagues and see what the plan is…going forward.

I have taken a cursory look at item three on the agenda and it clearly outlines that we are indeed encouraged to push the envelope, going forward, to drive sales through the roof. I suppose that will be a relief for many women who have been battling to breakthrough that glass ceiling. They can now seek solace in the fact that if sales have been driven through the roof, the sky will almost certainly be the limit.

Item four on the agenda. Now this is an interesting one.

‘All staff should ensure that they are courteous to customers at all times.’

Well that’s low hanging fruit. At risk of not thinking outside the box, all this three hundred and sixty degree thinking is enough to make me feel dizzy.

The note continues:

‘Apologies to the majority who do abide by the rules but there is always a small minority who do not.’

As an irritating thirty-something grammar pedant, that last remark is akin to fingers scraping across a blackboard. A minority, by definition, is small so why remark upon a small minority? Of course I do not say any of this aloud and focus on trying to make more useful contributions instead. The meeting continues for another hour and I decide to get off my soapbox before I am pushed off by some form of poetic justice.

After a long day’s work, I set off home and reflect on the duality of my own character: the good bits and not so good bits.

I suppose it’s called being human. Somehow, I can identify with that.



(1) The Bible, Matthew 7:3