A train commute and an umbrella

Claes Jonasson
9 min readFeb 23, 2020

It rained that morning. Not a soft, raindrop by raindrop, rain. But rather a windy, more sideways than vertical rain.

That was an important fact, worthy of note, because it made Martin step inside the waiting room in the old brick train station. Most days, he got there just minutes before the 7:10 train arrived. Enough time to situate himself on the platform and be one of anywhere from 20 to 30 passengers peering down the track to where the headlights of an incoming train would soon show up.

Today he went inside the old station building’s waiting room to escape the rain. It wasn’t jam-packed, but most of the would-be passengers were in there. A plethora of soggy umbrellas and humidity drifting in every time the door opened made the room feel more crowded. Martin debated whether to wend his way over the one of the few empty seats or just stay standing near the exit door. Given that the train should soon be here, he chose the latter.

Standing in a waiting room with strangers is unsettling. Because what to do with your hands? Where to look?

Martin was still fairly new to this whole commuter game. It was early fall and only about a month earlier that he’d started taking the train into the city each morning to his new job. Then back home each evening. It was a new phase in is life of 30-something years.

A woman standing near him was deep into reading her newspaper. Even though every person walking by bumped the paper and most likely made her lose her place on the page.

A man standing on the other side carefully held his briefcase in one hand, while busily checking something important on his phone with the other. Though it didn’t seem that he was all that skilled at holding the phone and typing with the same hand.

Martin couldn’t help but look around the room. The variety of people catching the train from here to go downtown every day fascinated him. Maybe because the crowd seemed much more diverse than he’d imagined before he started commuting. Not just the business types he’d expected. And as many women as men.

There was even a mother with a couple of kids.

He was jolted out of his daydreams when people around him all of a sudden stopped whatever they were doing and…

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Claes Jonasson

Writer, creative and web designer. Novelist in progress. Perpetually curious about life and living.