On the Sleeper Train

The Head-back-open-mouther
It is what it sounds. Person sleeps with head back and mouth wide open. They could be a midway game – you know, the kind where you try to toss a sandbag into the clown’s gaping mouth to win a prize…except in this case, your prize is a dose of someone’s halitosis.

Despite strategic seating positioning beside the window whereby giving the sleeping rider a place to wedge their head upright, level, or even tilted forward against the window, they still manage to subconsciously maneuver back to their namesake position, allowing for other riders to check for cavities. Amazingly, there is no drool or snoring.

The Wild Head Bobber
This rider usually missed their chance at snagging a window seat and was unluckily allocated to an aisle seat with nothing to lean on laterally. Here, the onus is on the rider to sleep sitting straight up in their own seat. Attempts at this usually result in the wild head bob whereby the rider does not manage to keep his or her head against the head rest and instead ends up bobbing around with the movements of the train. There are lateral movements included as well as there is a tug-o-war between unconscious neck-muscle relaxing and conscious jerk-of-the-neck-muscles-back-into-the straight-position-ing.

A side effect of this rider not having anything to rest against for stability is the tendency to lean at random while sleeping. Other passengers have to react accordingly to the rider’s tilting body by either:

• leaning away
• giving the rider a gentle and discreet nudge in the other direction
• taking videos and bets on when the rider will eventually lean too far and fall out of their seat.

The Glass Divider Slider
When all the window seats are taken, aware of the dangers of leaning themselves out of an aisle seat, this rider snaps up one of the few side-facing seats just inside the doors of the train. This allows them the luxury of being able to lean against the glass pane that acts as a divider between those seats and the passengers entering or exiting the train car. However, this head rest comes at a price. This glass is somehow more slippery than the train’s windows resulting in the tendency for the rider’s face to slide around against the glass, providing a spectacle of smashed faces for those seated on the other side of the pane to be amused by.

The Forward Leaner
Not to be confused with the side-to-side leaner stemming from the wild head bob, this sleeping beauty starts off sitting up, and then slowly begins to tilt forward. It’s a start-with-the-top-of-the-head-and-work-your-way-down full body roll forward until the forward leaner has leaned their head so low that they’re doubled over and at eye-level with their crotch. Classy.

The Snorer
It is what it is and it afflicts any one of the previously mentioned sleeping riders on this list. If the rider is lucky, they’ll wake themselves at the first breath gone wrong and prevent any future snores from escaping. If they’re unlucky, then the snorer gets awfully funny stares, glares, and eye-rolls from the other unlucky passengers in the vicinity as they all just try to survive the long commute in and out of the city together.

The Twitcher
While this rider does not sleep awkwardly on the train, they do not sleep well on the train and tend to twitch and jerk at inopportune moments along the ride. Hold onto your belongings if you find yourself close to one of these.
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And so now you know. I wish I could say that I categorized these sleep-types while I sat bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on my commutes to and from work this past week, but sadly, I cannot. I know them all because I assumed each of these positions myself at least once this week in a sad progression of sleepy embarrassment as I learned where to sit and how to sleep on the train. That is, except for the Twitcher. I am not one of those. But Slam apparently is. Apparently she managed to kick a man’s briefcase from across the seats during one of her twitches, a la Lucy vs Charlie Brown. He asked her if she was okay. She really should have asked him.