How do you teach a kid manners in this pushy world?

Once again in the face of adversity Vancouverites proved they can be the pushiest, passive aggressive idiots in the world.

After a day of snow, people in the city braced themselves for a day of commuting on ice-packed roads this morning. Those who wisely stayed off the roads opted to push their way onto transit. I was one of the many who had to scrap their way onto a train today.

When I first arrived at my station I knew fewer trains were running due to the crappy weather, so I was mentally prepared to wait awhile. After I climbed the stairs to the platform, I was pleasantly surprised to see people actually lining up for the next train.

But, of course, this would not last long.

As soon as the next train came a woman who was at the back of my line made a dash for the door. Being a true Vancouverite, she acted like this wasn’t a problem by ignoring everyone else who had been waiting in the cold for seven minutes.

Strangely nobody said anything. Knowing people would let her sneak onto the train, I quickly confronted her, telling her to get back into line. She apologized, saying she didn’t see the line. Yeah, right.

But my efforts were in vain, as the line I had fought so valiently for lasted another two minutes after this mini drama unfolded.SkyTrain, being the poorly a engineered transit system that does a substandard job of carrying heavy passenger loads, runs trains of different sizes that stop in different positions on the platform. People lining up for one door are soon overrun by people scrambling to get in the doors of another train that has come in a different position.

This situation causes an ongoing chaos at busy stations where people jostle to get on trains. I’ve seen people almost come to blows more than once due to the lack of order created by this crappy system.

Anyway when the next train came, I quickly moved with the guy I was standing beside at the front of the line to get into the door of a car that was three feet from where the previous train cars had stopped three times in a row.

Unfortunately, his elbows weren’t as sharp as mine, so he ended up being bumped by a guy and his girlfriend who had strategically positioned themselves a little way down the platform to capitalize on such a situation when it arose.

The trip downtown was a slow and pushy one.

This gave me plenty of time to think about how I’m going to socialize my son in a city the encourages individualism over the collective good – there are many more examples of this that go beyond SkyTrain, a recent example was the fights that broke out in supermarkets over bottled water during the boil-water advisory.

When I pushed my way off the train upon my arrival in the city, I had only one conclusion to my dilemma: either move or teach the little fella to take what he can get.

Since we’re not moving any time soon, I guess he won’t be a child that shares with others well.