I was minding my own business on the tube the other day, but that’s maybe not the most precise description of what I was up to. I’m curious on public transport; I like to check what other people are reading, smile at them while they do their makeup, eavesdrop if they’re with a friend, generally get in everyone’s business like a terrier. And while I was up to my antics, I made what I thought was a friendly expression at two young people sitting together, for no better reason than that they were making each other laugh and one of them had a scarf that looked a bit French, when one said: “Would you like to sit down?”
Would I like to sit down? What’s the minimum age to be asked that? Maybe 70? And even then only if they had a walking stick. How could I alert him to his astronomical misjudgment? Should I do a pull-up on the handrail? I cannot do a pull-up. All I could say was, “No, thank you.”
I couldn’t let it go, afterwards. Everyone I saw, I interrogated about why this had happened to me. My friend, in desperation, said maybe he thought I was pregnant. Someone said, referencing the scarf, that maybe he was French, and they have different standards. Maybe all French men offer all women their seat. My son said all old people look the same age to people who are not old. My brother-in-law, helpfully, showed me a picture of myself when I put on the prosthetic face of an older person and wandered around London for a week (for a feature I wrote). Jeez, that was 20 years ago – and it’s true, I don’t recall making any distinctions about what age I was trying to be, reasoning that the difference between 60 and 80 didn’t matter when all I needed to look was “old”. Also, incidentally, nobody offered me a seat on anything that entire time: people were just a lot less nice.
Still, I’m 51! We don’t need seats on things. We’re famously – not me, others of my kind – really good at triathlons. “Have you tried,” asked my son as a follow-up, “just staying out of other people’s business, when you’re on the tube?” OK, that; I’m going to try that.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
