Those are the words printed on the top of a pair of headphones as they clung to the neck of the man in front of me on the metro. The Dupont Circle station had come into view and while the operator announced our stop I made my way toward the middle door of the car. I have a couple of pet peeves when it comes to riding the public transportation: people who eat and drink on the metro when it clearly states that its against the law, people who listen to their headphones so loud that they might as well have brought a portable stereo with them on the train, people who sit in the elderly/handicapped seats without offering those seats to the elderly or handicapped around them, and people who lean on the vertical poles and make it impossible for those shorter people around them to get a handhold. This man was a leaner.
The other bothersome part about his leaning on the pole was that it made it necessary for me to wait until he moved before I could get any closer to the door. This may sound a bit like picking at knits, but any metro rider worth their smartrip card knows that the sooner you get out of the door at a heavily trafficked station, the better your day is going to be. So the man was already two points ahead on my scale of irritation. Then I saw the headphones.
Call me old fashioned, but if an object has the equivalent of "don't steal me" printed directly on it, that would probably mean that whoever placed it where you found it would like it to remain where you found it. Again, maybe I'm old fashioned. Maybe "yes" means "no" now and victims are really criminals in disguise, what with all the stuff they don't want stolen. How dare they keep it all to themselves?
What struck me the hardest was that this man never tried to remove the label from the top of his headphones and then wore them in such a way that anyone standing behind him, a common occurrence on the metro, would be able to read them. That speaks to me of either ignorance or baldfaced audacity. So, as my attention is wont to do, I tracked the man as he left the metro car, climbed the first escalator, and walked toward the metro turnstiles.
In his 40s with a face reminiscent of a mallard duck and hair receding like the rain forests, this man wore a simple, solid light blue button up shirt, an immaculately clean black book bag, and beige khakis that bulged slightly at the hips. He walked as if his stride was too short for his legs and each leg came down with the full force of his weight. He walked like a person who was trying to hurry but didn't want those around him to know. Perhaps he was trying to make sure nobody knew his headphones were stolen. Maybe that's just the way he walks.
The details swam through my head creating little 'V's of thought as I plodded up the long escalator at Dupont Circle. This man, dressed as he was with his button up shirt, khakis, and book bag, going to Washington DC and using the metro like everyone else, was not the type of person I had in mind as a thief. Maybe he wasn't though. I did think about that. Maybe somebody else took them and they were sold at a yard sale and the man decided he needed a pair of headphones. Maybe the company that owned the airplane went bankrupt and these headphones were sold to the highest bidder?
You see some interesting things on the metro.
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