Small World

I was riding home on a, brace yourself, packed train! No seats to be had anywhere. Kids were even sitting on their parents laps. But the A/C was working well, so I wasn't that cranky. I was in the middle of a good read (this was before I started using Audible to get books on my iPod), and was looking forward to the 45 minute train ride to make some decent headway on the wonderful world of Greenspan. The book was a pretty heavy hardback though (if you've read Age of Turbulence you know what I'm talking about), so I couldn't stand in the middle of the car and read like I normally do. I needed to lean against something and use two hands. You know, for safety. Since I didn't want to be that guy leaning against the glass at the door entrance, I went to the back of the car and stood in the aisle, against the door. I've found that this space is quality for reading on the metro. You're standing in a spot where you don't get bumped when people exit and because it's in the back of the car it's not that crowded. As I was reading, I hadn't noticed that the car was getting increasingly filled to capacity and that the book was slowly lowering. Both relatively insignificant items of note, or so I thought. As I read, I would raise the book higher to read easier, and it would lower because holding a weight at a fixed point is butt hard. At one point the book hit some resistance, ending the up and down cycle. Now this didn't add up. I was standing up and there wasn't any obstruction (like a backpack from someone standing in front of me) that I could see. So I lifted up the book to see what I had hit. Surprise, surprise, there was a midget standing underneath my book! My book had been resting on top of a midget's head!!! Apparently the little person had been pushed further back as the car filled up, and stood underneath my book. I uttered a hasty apology, and got some sort of midget speak back that I can only interpret as "S'all right." Woops!