Commuting home on the train

 Commuting home on the train

When I had just turned 18 I took a job in the city of London. it was working for a bank sorting, as an office clerk, the correspondence for stocks and shares. my building on the old broad Street was next to the NatWest Tower which is such a tall building that my office did not get light from the sunshine until four in the afternoon when the sun made it around the corner of the net West Tower through my window on the seventh floor of my own building. I would commute  on the train from home for an hour each way on the aleways crowded train. every seat was full and all the standing areas taken by people standing on the hourly commute in and out of London for work each and every day. this is all I knew. my parents were both commuters and travelled in this exact same way as long as I could remember. and I knew no better and I know no different. and this is what everybody did. one day on the train home from work A young man offered me his seat. I was embarrassed because I thought it meant he thought I was old or pregnant or disabled and I was only 18, and only just 18, so I refused. but he insisted so reluctantly I sat and I sat very uncomfortably on the very edge of the corner of the seat because I hadn’t really wanted to take it and therefore  I tried to occupy it as little as possible. He then stood there looking uncomfortable the whole way too.  looking back now that I am 48 I think perhaps this young man could not of thought I was old pregnant or disabled but maybe in fact was hoping to get to know me better. maybe he hoped I would sit in the seat and thank him nicely and then we might have a conversation where I say, ‘oh thank you, that’s very kind of you but you really didn’t need to I’m not old or disabled or pregnant.’ and then he’d laugh and I realise that it was silly to think but he thought that. maybe he just wanted to chat, well maybe he wanted a girlfriend, and it never occurred to me then that he might be looking for a girlfriend. It is only now occurring  to me. I sometimes wish that I’d had that mindset, that I’d realised that people were looking for a girlfriend or a boyfriend but they were looking for a partner and possibly ultimately a wife or husband and set up a home and have kids. and that never occurred to me, so it’s not something  I ever deliberately did. I merely had to get work, not even because I had to earn money, although that was an enjoyable side-effect, I need simply that I had to get a job and that was a requirement and that’s all that I knew. I obviously knew I needed to buy somewhere to live And that having food and shelter was something I sought out as a basic requirement, but it never occurred to me to find a partner in life or even unfortunately to have had a conversation with the young man, and maybe I should have.