" May you have a son..."
The words echoed through my head as I boarded the underground. I knew it was an old blessing, but I had not expected her to say it. Why hadn't she just said " May you have a bright child", or " a healthy baby"? Why "a son" ? It made me wonder if she had said the same before I was to be born. Would she have been disappointed that I wasn't? She had never said so, nor did I ever notice her treating me differently from my male cousins, but still it made me doubt.

The train was crammed and I had to squeeze myself past the commuters. It wasn't very different from other days, yet somehow I began to look at them more closely. Normally I would ignore them, stare out of the window to the bare walls of the tunnels, but now my gaze drifted over the other passengers. Was it just my imagination or did the men occupy more space and talk more loudly than the women?
Surprisingly many of them had placed their feet wide apart, their crotch showing, as if their... parts... needed space to breath. They didn't seem to bother that this meant their knees pressed against those of their neighbour. Instead, it seemed some of them were making it a wrestling game for space.
I saw one of them sticking his finger in his nose. Some men have such big noses that they can put their finger in up to the second phalanx. I was disgusted as wel as intrigued. Did he not notice people were looking, or did he just not care?
The guy opposite to him was shouting in his phone in a language I didn't know. 'Fuck' and 'asshole' were the only words I could understand.

The train slowed down and just as I had squeezed myself into it, now people were squeezing themselves out. I pressed myself against the benches to give them more room, but suddenly I felt something touch my backside. A shock went through my body and I looked at the man who just left the vehicle as if nothing happened. Jerk... There he went with his suit, tie and balding head, probably married, but ready to pinch a complete stranger's butt. I wondered what he did with his secretary and if his wife knew.

New people took the place of the old ones. Students by the sound of them.
" Scored a chick last night."
" I know; A first year's. The fresh grass is way too green eh?"

They both looked as if they hadn't slept for ages, and I wondered how many drinks the 'fresh grass' had needed before she ended up in the bed of an old ox.

" Did you do that assignment?"
" What assignment?"
" The one we had to hand in yesterday."
" Oh bugger. I had another 'assignment' if you get what I mean."

Yes, typically guys. Too lazy to even remember what exercise they had to make. Why was he staring at me? I looked away, but in the window's reflection I saw how his gaze was still fixed at me. Did he see me as a graze-able meadow too? I thought not!

The next stop was mine, at last. I got off the train and walked past the posters advertising computers. For some reason the bimbos showing them didn't understand that it was winter, for they could certainly do with more clothes. Would such commercials realy work? I didn't recognize myself in those scarcely dressed dolls with their fake breasts, silicone lips and warpaint on their faces. Yet somehow I guessed I wasn't the target group anyhow.

I walked past the bearded beggars and the pot smoking teenage guys and sought my way to the escalator. Office clerks rushed past me and at last I saw sunlight again. A little boy came running towards me with a toy gun.
" Bang, bang!", he cried, " You're dead."

What's wrong with a girl, I wondered.