Photo by Adrien Ledoux on Unsplash – Grateful for the access to high quality, royalty-free images!
The London underground, much like the New York City subway, offers a bevy of characters to people-watch, everyone uses it, from the banker to the student, the wealthy to the not-so-wealthy and you hear languages from all over the world. One Friday night, I was on the tube alone, returning to my friend’s flat. It was about 11 PM and not too crowded. I stood leaning against the door (unsafe, I know), with my iPhone earphones on, but no music, checking out the people around me.
The seats to my immediate left were inhabited by three rather loquacious individuals, they looked like they were in their late 30s – early 40s, two men and a bubbly blonde woman. I assessed that they were co-workers who had gone out for after-work drinks. Diagonally across from them, was a couple that looked rather swanky, clad in black, both were tall and lanky. Next to them, a young girl with a backpack and headphones that took up 50% of her head and next to her, in the last seat, a young woman in her mid-20’s, whose entire demeanor was meek and quiet, a complete antithesis to her bright green hair.
You could only really hear the three happy-hour dwellers chatter away, everyone else kind of kept to themselves. Suddenly, the blonde, bubbly woman to my left, turned to the green-haired girl sitting directly across from her and with a genuine tone, yelled,
“I’m sorry, I just have to tell you, your hair is absolutely amazing. I really mean it. I – we – absolutely love it! How do you get that colour? It is fantastic!”
The young green-haired woman was taken aback. She awkwardly touched her hair and began explaining the different companies she used, how the first one she tried turned her hair blue after one wash, listed which companies to avoid, how to get the best outcome and forced a closed smile at the end of her explanation.
“Well, it’s just wonderful, really, just wonderful, so great!” the bubbly blonde repeated her affirmation with enthusiasm.
The young green-haired woman looked up, looked directly at the bubbly blonde and timidly revealed a smile and in a vulnerable, earnest voice, said,
“Thank you. I really needed to hear that. I’ve been having some bad days. I really needed to hear that. Thank you.”
The tall, lanky, swanky couple, the girl with the huge headphones, the two men accompanying the bubbly blonde, the bubbly blonde and myself repeated, almost in unison, “It really does look great!”
