Public Transport: Validation Disorder
November 2nd 2006 00:12
A lady boards the tram. She shuffles through a herd of children to an empty seat at the other end and sits next to the weird man who smells like cheese. She spends the next 3 minutes searching her handbag and finally finds her wallet from which she then extracts her tram ticket. She tries to validate her ticket from her seated position but misbalances, falling off her seat slightly and dropping one of her shopping bags. She stands up and the tram stops, sending her flying into the fat sweaty man sitting opposite her. In his instant reaction to protect himself from the oncoming collision he brings his hands up in defense. He accidentally gropes her breast for 2 seconds and then apologises. She finally makes it to the validating machine. Her first attempt to validate the ticket in the machine fails, so she tries again. Fails. Tries again. The ticket simply won’t go in. She brings the ticket up to her eyes for closer inspection. She looks at the ticket, and then at the machine. She tries feeding the ticket in for the fourth time and fails. Again she looks at the ticket. She turns the ticket over, looks at the machine and then looks at the ticket. She tries again and once more for good luck, but fails both times. She studies the ticket more closely. She turns it over. She spins it around in the figure eight. She sprinkles fairy dust on it. She folds it in half and duck-dives it into the machine. The validating machine still will not accept her ticket. Finally, when she looks like she’s just about to give up, when her hair is all messy and her make-up is running and she looks like she hasn’t slept for 3 days, the fat smelly man reaches over and shows her the correct way to validate the ticket.
We’ve all witnessed it. We all know what I’m talking about here. Validation Disorder is a common disease that affects 1 in 10 public transport users in Melbourne. Upon inspecting a met-card ticket, you may notice that there are only 4 possible ways of inserting the ticket into the validating machine. Many people find the correct way to validate the ticket by a process of logic while others use the process of elimination. Passengers with Validation Disorder may show signs of attempting this process of elimination, however the disease means that they can only discover the 3 incorrect ways and never the correct method of validation. This is one of the most common mental illnesses in Melbourne yet it is not getting the kind of attention it needs. The cause of this disease can be blamed on a combination of the stupidity of Homo sapiens and the public transport system’s lack of resources for accommodating the stupidity of Homo sapiens.
We’ve all witnessed it. We all know what I’m talking about here. Validation Disorder is a common disease that affects 1 in 10 public transport users in Melbourne. Upon inspecting a met-card ticket, you may notice that there are only 4 possible ways of inserting the ticket into the validating machine. Many people find the correct way to validate the ticket by a process of logic while others use the process of elimination. Passengers with Validation Disorder may show signs of attempting this process of elimination, however the disease means that they can only discover the 3 incorrect ways and never the correct method of validation. This is one of the most common mental illnesses in Melbourne yet it is not getting the kind of attention it needs. The cause of this disease can be blamed on a combination of the stupidity of Homo sapiens and the public transport system’s lack of resources for accommodating the stupidity of Homo sapiens.
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Charles.