The Mysterious Stain

This afternoon I face a dilemma on the subway. I have both my large purse and my laptop weighing down on my shoulders and notice one seat open on the 5 train. Just one. As I dash my way over something makes me stop short. Directly under the seat is an ambiguous large sticky spot/puddle. In order to squeeze my way onto the seat my feet would have to directly straddle the stain. Just how bad do I want to that seat? Pretty bad. However, I do know never to trust anything remotely stain-like in a subway car. I decide to take a risk and go for it. The woman standing across from me gives a skeptical “You are much braver than I“ look. I bury my face into my jacket just in case the stain had a smell. Now that would just make things much worse and probably would be a deciding factor against sitting down.

As with many things on the subway, I just would rather not know.