Stranger than Fiction (duh na nuh nah nuh nah nuh nah)

Doesn't happen every day, but it happens enough that we should have a plan.  A plan to pick out certain qualities or make outlandish assumptions; an idea of what to look for just in case we find ourselves sitting opposite a stranger with nowhere to fix our eyes  - that is - but straight at them.

Yo, Dawg, give Grumpy his
Royale With Cheese

For me, this strange but often inevitable peculiarity happens when I am lucky to get a seat on the morning train, but only if that seat falls in the strange section of seats that face each other.  What is with that?  Am I the only one that finds these arrangements odd?  Does Southwest Airlines still have these bucket-to-bucket arrangements?  Okay, I get that these seats are pretty awesome when you are sitting opposite your g-f or b-f, but even then you have nowhere to put your feet but between the dirt-ridden bottoms of the barking dogs kicked-out towards you.  And when it is a stranger - well you hope you are wearing corduroy or denim so when your calves rub against each other, you somehow have the upper hand. 

Back to the point, if there was one:  we should have a plan for when this happens.  You know, like we are forced to make certain assumptions about the person.  For instance, that person would order such-and-such at McDonald's (you can spot a Filet-O-Fish person a kilometer away); would choose either American Idol/X-Factor or Jersey Shore/Essex Girls if forced to watch an entire season on a Sunday afternoon; and would be this-or-that one of the seven drawfs.

Just something, because often the arrangement leaves us disappointed.  Today I sat across a person for almost half an hour and know not enough about him to write a story - even if I made most of it up.  He worked for a company that ran restaurants, he was some sort of manager, and he wore a pink tie.  Half of an hour sitting directly opposite the guy and that is all I have for you - none of it odd or even remotely interesting (in London, that is).  

Imagine if I told you I sat opposite a man, more than just short in stature, with a green tunic that had chicken nugget stains just under where his beard should have been, and just beneath a droopy purple hat that smelled like ferry dust, a set of tiny red ear buds blasted Kelly Clarkson into the his relatively over sized ear-drums.  I'm just saying, that could be more fun.