Woman Takes Off Noise Cancelling Headphones After Sneezing To See If Anyone Said Bless You
An incident occurred late last night on Chicago's CTA Bus Route 8 Northbound on Halsted.
Kristen Mildrings, a 28-year-old Lakeview resident, was taking her typical commute home from her restaurant job in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood. The bus was somewhat crowded. Read on to find out why that’s relevant.
Mildrings, tired of a day of being berated by her manager–who, despite being the same age as her, is a total asshole and also completely bald, already–boarded the bus at 9:48pm. She sat down in an open spot next to a tall reading gentleman and threw on her Bose Quietcomfort Noise Cancelling over-the-ear headphones. She started bumping her freaking jam, “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND” by Raye.
Mildrings’s roommate had been suffering from the common cold in the week before the incident occurred, which is important context. Read on to find out why.
Right at the part of her freaking jam when Raye goes “I WOULD LIKE A RING / I WOULD LIKE A RING” Mildrings felt a quivering within the bowels of her nose. Mildrings had held in a couple sneezes that day at work that day because Brian the Fascist (this is what she and her coworkers call their completely bald manager) always admonishes them for sneezing or coughing on the floor.
Covering her mouth with the inside part of her elbow like Obama taught her in 2009 (remember?), Mildrings let out three sneezes, each more uproarious than the next. After a moment, she lowered her elbow.
Completely unconsciously, Mildrings pulled her noise cancelling headphones off of her ears and took in the silence of the people on the bus. She put her headphones back on, for a moment not sure why she had taken them off in the first place.
Then, she turned red, realizing that her subconscious had propelled her to take off her headphones in expectation of a kindly, “bless you!” or even a quirky, “erm, gezuntheit!!” from someone who is maybe a little silly or funny sometimes. Um, embarrassing! But did anyone see her do it? Read on to find out.
Her tall reading gentleman neighbor tapped her on the shoulder. She removed her headphones again and looked expectantly at him. “Hey,” he said, “ I noticed you took off your headphones expecting someone to say ‘bless you’ to you and I just want you to know I think you’re fucking crazy. No one on this bus even knows you. If we’re all strangers to you, what kind of self-involved, self-obsessed person would you have to be to think that everyone else needs to stop what they’re doing to ‘bless’ you. You’re nuts, and you’ll never fare in this society thinking it revolves around you.”
Normally, this type of talking-to would’ve made Kristen Mildrings feel ashamed. But after a day of “taking it” from Brian, she had had ENOUGH. She stood up. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH,” she said, because, yes, she had.
This guy looked freakin shocked. “We DO owe something to each other!! We live in the world together!! Common courtesy is not too much to expect. Kindness is not too much to expect. We NEED PEOPLE. We NEED EACH OTHER. So yes, bless me! And bless you, and gezuntheit to you all!!”
At that point everyone stood up and clapped for her and ejected the rude reading guy off of the bus!!!! Then what happened? Read on to find out!!!!!!