So there is this weird old lady at the bus I usually take to work; she's thin, relatively frail with yellow-white hair and her head kind of…wobbles all the time. She always gets on the bus 2 stops after me and usually by then all the seats of the bus are taken. What makes her deserve a mention here is her seat-finding tactics.
This lady wants to seat and I mean she really wants to sit. She's not any kind of paraplegic either, kind of agile as well as you'll see later but for some inexplicable reason, as people's like her usually are, she craves for that perfect seat. That in itself wouldn't be so bad or strange as I'm usually used to seeing old people that could be better of sitting because of some specific problem or just generic frail bones likely to break at the first fall. Many just ask some young person if they can take their seat and usually they will get it. However, this lady, either because she doesn't feel she deserves a seat or because she's too shy will try very hard to get the first available seat.
Now when she is just standing around, she is constantly scanning her immediate are for signs of seat-emptying. If someone checks his bag, checks his environment to get his bearings, adjust his position or whatever else makes it seem like he's about to leave, this lade will move into attack position. That is as close as possible to the target, sometimes discreetly pushing people out of their position so that she can get a better vector.
In the case that someone does get up, she moves to intercept! She moves deftly and swiftly through the crowd and may even run the last few feet in order to get her behind in relative comfort. People that haven't noticed it are usually startled by her appearance on the scene and I'm talking from personal experience here. A while ago I was on the front side of the bus and last time I checked her, she was about the middle half. From where we were standing there is easily a 5 meter distance. Now the person in front of me suddenly get up and goes to exit, this means that I was now between her and the empty seat. Seeing no one elderly near I move to sit, and I had to pass around a holding pole to do that because said pole is near another seat and you have to maneuver to move between them.
Before I could even turn around to get into my usual “this seat is now taken, move along” position, I see a blur and this lady is now happily sitting, to my dismay, on my former butt-target. She literally jumped over the seat next to the pole and landed on the seat on her ass and with a smug look on her face.
I was kind of shocked and amused to see her both move so fast and for such a reason, but I'm not usually one to take something like that gracefully, mainly because I like to confront people about their bullshit, so I announce
“Hey lady, take it easy”
“Oh I'm sorry” She said while making to get up “Did you want this seat” all feigned innocence.
“Not really, just don't hurt yourself”
Now I was truly amused. She was acting all surprised and innocent that she took my seat when she was pretty aware of what she was doing all the time. I didn't really care about it, since I found another seat a few minutes later, but it's pretty funny to see people get worked up for a friggin' bus seat.
After that incident I decided that she was worth paying attention to, both for the humorous material that she is and because she is bound to get into trouble eventually but also because I don't want to turn around to seat only to find myself sitting onto a suddenly materialized woman.
In any case, her antics do not end with just a simple seat taking. Oh no, that's just too easy. Not only must she have the first seat to free up, but she is constantly looking for a better ass holder. I have seen her jump from one seat to another, even when those seats are in opposite sides of the bus. She gets up in a half crouch, golum-like, zips through the intervening space and get down on her new target. People are always taken by surprise by that one.
So that's the case of the Seat Hunter, as I've dubbed her. Today is actually the day I took the decision that she is worth watching.