Dilemma

“Fat”

I stood reading my Metro at Hounslow West tube station and wondered if I had heard the word right.

“Fat people”

Now I was sure he was talking to me.  The “he” in question was a middle-aged Asian bloke with a vacant expression, scruffily dressed.

“Fat bitch taking up space”

This was embarrassing, he was standing about 10 foot away from me and, given that I could hear him easily, there were plenty of other people in earshot.  At this point I looked directly at him, he looked back and muttered “I will go in another carriage then”.

At this point the train came into the station, the man walked straight past me towards another carriage but pointedly caught me with his rucksack, causing me to step forward (a lot less scary than it would have been without a train at the platform!) and we saw no more of each other. 

Now, my dilemma is really around my reaction to this situation.  I confess that it unsettled me, I was shaking a little as I got on the train and was sufficiently distracted to forget to text my mum her usual “morning, I’m on the tube” greeting.  Like all fat birds I’m well used to the drunken catcalls of thicko Britain but this perturbed me more and I’m puzzled as to why.

I think its because I didn’t know what I was dealing with.  When I get abused of an evening, I know to go into defuse or ignore mode. Given that I’ve never actually been beaten up, my response of either a friendly smile (amazing how it can shame them) or a swift (by my standards anyway) retreat seems to have worked thus far.  This morning however, I must admit my initial reaction was that he was a nutter.  Not very PC I know but then I’m not really in the mood for niceties. I was assuming Tourettes or some similar form of mental disorder and so common decency tells me I should have just ignored him or gone into defuse mood as normal; ultimately if the fella was stood there going “aaaaagh why can’t I shut up” inside, then giving him the scary-bird stare was a bit out of order.

And yet.

Alastair Campbell suffers from a mental illness. He is also a twat and a bully.  Is it possible that my initial reaction which was to feel humiliated and then confrontational was in fact, correct.  I was the only fat person on the platform but I was also the only white person on the platform.  It’s interesting that he abused me about my weight but not my race , so whatever was making him abuse me was ensuring that he focused on a 2009-acceptable form of abuse and not anything else.  Shoving me with the bag was not the actions of someone struggling to control their outbursts but of a genuine bully. 

Of course there is a large area of non-conventional human behaviour which does not count as being mentally ill but is basically not very civilised.  Mental illness can be a convenient alibi for nasty, abusive and downright criminal behaviour.  I’m aware that being cynical about mental illness and disorders can quickly lead down a dangerous path towards scientology or the freaks who think that dyslexia doesn’t exist (0ver reported, I buy, but that’s different).   I don’t know enough about Tourettes and similar disorders to recognise the symptoms I saw today but I would bet that this man is just a nasty piece of work who went on his way chuckling about how he had humiliated a fat bird.   

Commuters do get to recognise each other and I have certainly seen him before. 

 I wonder what I should do next time.  It certainly won’t involve a smile.