Slapper

Over the past 12 months or so I have, on occasion, noticed an intellectually disabled woman aged about 40,waiting for the 7.45 train to the city from the platform of the station after mine. As I never travel on the same carriage two days running I have only ever seen her as we pull into the station, I haven’t (up until today) had the experience of travelling in the same carriage.
Now, the reason I noticed her in the first place was because of her rather colourful manner of dress. She is usually dressed in long shorts made from that clinging T-shirt material, joggers with long socks and a variety of long T-shirts with rude phrases on them in neon pink, green or yellow. Add to the mix that she is of diminutive stature (4 ft tall) and about 200 kilos, you can see why she attracts my attention. (She actually bears a striking resemblance to Benny Ball, that little side kick of Top Cat’s)
I assume that she works in a sheltered workshop somewhere on my line as she catches a train every day.
Whenever I spot this lady I think about how nice it is that she has employment and to see her on the platform all puffed up with the self confidence that working gives most people, makes you feel all warm and snugly inside.
I was running a bit late the other day and just jumped on in the middle of the train. I made my way downstairs and sat in a front row seat for the theatrics that followed.
I could see her on the platform as we pulled in, she was wearing a pair of neon bright orange, skin tight, knee length shorts with a long white T-shirt with ‘love you long time’ written on the front in blue. Choice! The socks almost came to her knees and were footy socks in blue and white. (eeeeeeeeeeek a Canterbury supporter)
You know - somewhere a paint factory exploded and she was standing just a little bit too close.
Anyway, she walked into the carriage coming down the stairs with lots and lots of moaning and huffing and puffing and, because her legs are too short to have knees, loud clumping. When she passed me she started slowly counting the seats, out loud, on her left, one, two, three. (Her voice sounds just like a munchkin on helium) She stopped at three, there was a man sitting in seat 3. She repeats the number 3, slightly louder. No reaction from the man, I’m wondering what she wants him to do – acknowledge that she can count? Now she screams at him – ‘3,3,3 you’re in my seat, get out, get out!!!! Then promptly hauls back and smacks him fair on the back of the head.
His head rocks forward with the force of the slap, but he totally ignores her. !!!!!????
Imagine! I have my lower jaw on the floor in amazement as this tiny little thing launches into a full scale assault on this poor man whose only crime is to sit in the wrong seat. In between slaps she is yelling that he is in her seat. After what seems like 10 minutes but was probably only 10 seconds, the man points to a seat and directs her there as it is vacant. Big mistake, if she’d had a weapon he would have been toast. Tears were added to the screaming and the hitting and she won, the poor man moved over to another seat and let the screaming banshee have her way.
Good grief!! Is this what she is like every morning? The train isn’t ever very crowded so she would always be guaranteed a seat, obviously she has taken obsessive compulsiveness to extremes.
So psycho chicken sits in her seat, she fishes around in her purple ‘Coles’ bag and drags out what looks like a giant children’s paintbox but is actually a kaleidoscope of eye shadow shades. She chooses a garish green and proceeds to colour in her eye lid from on top of the eyebrow (yes that’s right on top, on her forehead) to the bottom lid. She would have done a better job if she coloured in one side of a tennis ball and pushed it into her eye socket. She has deep set, small eyes so the effect is frog like.
Out comes the lipstick next. It’s bright, fire engine red. She starts just under her nose and colours all of her top lip, the bottom lip is left without lipstick. She now looks like a clown. She is looking around the carriage, smiling at us all, beaming her pleasure at how beautiful she looks and how professionally she has applied her face. This woman is in possession of a mirror I might add.
I can feel a huge laugh building up in my chest, I catch the eye of a woman a little way off from me but she looks at me real hard and shakes her head at me. I have to swallow the laugh as this lady has frightened me a bit, what could happen if you laugh? I decide that after seeing that poor man get beaten up I wouldn’t test the waters.
Ok, now she is reading aloud (very aloud) from a little golden book!! By the time we hit Central Station I can recite Clarence the Cat and his adventures with Monty the Pirate Mouse by rote. Sigh.
Compared to her ascendance into our carriage her departure is a non event. The book slams shut, gets put away and she is out of there so fast she’s a blur.
The lady who gave me ‘the look’ came and sat next to me, apparently it’s the same every morning. That seat is her seat and no one is allowed to sit there and she becomes quite violent if anyone is sitting there. Some passengers have said something to her mother but apparently they don’t want to get her into too much trouble as the workshop is the only time her family get a break.
I wonder what would happen if she hit someone who hits back?