Miss Manner's guide to tranist

A letter to the girls on transit with me this morning...


Dear nubile nitwits,

I understand that you are only 19 years old and have not yet evolved to the point where you realize that you are not the only people that matter on the planet, but your fellow commuters have something to say.

We do not care about your Saturday night.

We do not care about the conversations that you had with Biff, Charla, Stevie and Rezzo at the Plaza.

We do not care that you were "Like so pissed off".

We do, however, want you to learn proper English grammar, because it is evident through the myriad of "likes, beeayches, yaaaaaaaaaaaahs and dudes" that you couldn't put together a coherent sentence if you were forced to at gunpoint. It concerns all of us that both of you are heading to Douglas College (we know this because of the Douglas college emblem on the ass of your sweatpants) to pursue higher education when you sound like Moon Unit Zappa. "Like" is not a word that can be used as a verb, adverb, noun, adjective and expletive depending on your mood.

We do not need to over hear THIS at 188 decibels (which for your edification, is the same decibel level as the launch of a Space Shuttle), which was the level at which you were speaking,

"Oh...my...god! And then, like, yah, he was like "I like you" and I was like "dude! I totally don't like you like that. You're like...well...like....yah. Like come on. Don't get like in my face!" And then he was like "Beeyach" and I was like "whatever" and he was like"you!" and I was so like angry and like sad that I was totally like "wah" and like crying, like you know?"

We, your fellow commuters, appreciate that you have not seen each other in a whole 2 days and have not MSN'd in over an hour. ROTFLMAO. We know that you miss each other and just MUCH catch up because SO MUCH has happened!!! We do wish to remind you that the skytrain is quite small and if you yell at each other like you are on opposite shores we all will hear your inanely annoying conversation. Through our headphones. Our headphones that have really loud music playing through them. Really loud music that doesn't seem to block out your voices because of the extremely high pitch. Like a dog whistle. Or nails on a chalkboard.

So, dear sweet ladies, we have one thing to say to you. And we mean this from the bottom of our hearts.

Shut the f*&k up!!!!

Thank you,

The commuters on the 8:05 am skytrain from Edmonds to New Westminster Station.