I was a standee on the Bakerloo Line, relaxing against the handrail in today's humidity. Two passengers seated nearest to me had alighted, but I did not realise. Uncommon for the notoriously low interactional levels on the London Underground, a man - around senior age - gesticulated towards me to catch my attention and informed me that there were now two seats available to sit on. I told him I was getting off the next stop, but thanked him for his consideration before returning the interactional favour by catching his attention to wish him a good day before I myself alighted the next stop. I admittedly walked towards the doors with some haste to walk away from the attention I had created for ourselves to reinforce the fact that there is that awkwardness surrounding interaction on public transport, but more important to me was asserting a kind gesture back to the man.
As banal an anecdote it is, considerate and polite interaction like this is unfortunately not the norm on public transport, especially in London. Hence it is moments like these that I come to appreciate and, upon reflection, there is an additional appreciation for this module in that it embraces such banalities of everyday life that are otherwise left unspoken in common discourse and further left under-acknowledged by the generally theoretical sphere of academia.
I was just thinking if interaction on public transport is a generational thing - perhaps the gesture was nothing to the senior but something to me because I am a part of a generation which has possibly created this unspoken rule of not talking to strangers on public transport even for simple gestures like the one shared in this post?
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