i'm appalled.

let me set the scene for you: the brown el from belmont to washington and wells around 8:45 this morning. the el is not as crowded as usual (probably because i am running a little late today), but all the seats with the exception of one are taken. the one 'empty' seat is occupied by a bag. and next to the bag in the other seat is a girl probably slightly younger than us... maybe early to mid 20s (my friends, sadly we are late 20s... ahhhhhhh! - but not the point of this story). this said girl has a backpack on her lap and maybe a purse. she has 2 or 3 bags with her. i am in one of the two seats in front of these two sitting closest to the window with a girl sitting next to me closest to the aisle. an elderly lady asks the girl if she would please move her bag so she may sit. this girl, says in a quite rude voice, ugh, is there something wrong with your feet or are you handicapped? can't you stand? my bags are here, and where would you like me to put them? i guess i'll pile all of them in my lap (which btw, the bags were not that unmanageable). the woman says, i could stand, but i'd prefer to sit. i'm 70 years old and would like to get off my feet. *my commenting here: are you kidding?!?!?!?! this poor woman should NEVER have had to say this in the first place!* and this girl continues to be rude and they have a few back and forths and i'm trying my hardest to stay out of it. i've learned that to jump in to something like this only makes it worse. so the girl sitting next to me turns around and says to the older woman, you can have my seat and gets up and stands for the rest of her trip. the girl says, ugh, she already has her seat. and good for the elderly lady standing her ground, she continues to sit in that seat. so someone else came and sat down next to me. the girl a few stop later says that she is getting off so the elderly lady lets her out of the seat and even hands her a water bottle she'd left on the seat. no thank you for handing it to her at all. unable to keep my big mouth shut any more and feeling terrible that "my generation" is so bloody rude, i turned around to the elderly woman and said i am so sorry you had to deal with that. it was incredibly rude and i am sorry on her behalf. and then i turned around. and the elderly lady said thank you and was so sweet. she then tapped my shoulder and said thank you and that she was wondering if she had just been crabby today or something and i said oh no that girl was very rude. now, i had forgotten that the train hadn't stopped yet and that that girl was still waiting to get off. whoops. so of course she overheard me and said something and i don't remember what, but to her i just said, i'm sorry, i thought you were rude. and then she got off and i went back to reading my redeye (the free paper). seriously, i was so appalled, all i could think of was to come and write my blog story! unbelievable.