By admin 
A woman may have committed arguably one of the most embarrassing faux pas in public transit history after not paying attention to where she sat. Nola (@nolagordon) shared a pair of Snapchat photos she took while riding the bus. Her lack of situational awareness earned her over 270,000 views on TikTok.
‘This seat is reserved’
Nola’s first Snapchat photo, which showed her covering her mouth, was captioned, “I was wondering why everyone was staring at [me] AND I LOOK AT MY SEAT TO SEE THIS.”
The next photo showed a sign tacked on the seat she was in. It read: “This seat is reserved in honor of Rosa Parks.”
It continued, “RideOn is proud to pay tribute to Rosa Parks and to all who make a seat available to everyone.”
Needless to say, Nola probably felt like she wanted the ground to swallow her up. She added in the caption, “Crying cause there’s actually no way??”
Viewers are cracking up
Nola’s commenters couldn’t contain their teasing. Several laughed at her misfortune, with some sharing what they’d do in her shoes.
“What are they gonna do? kick you off?” one joked. Another told her to pretend she couldn’t read English.
Others defended Nola, with one stating the sign should’ve been bigger and another saying they “would definitely assume that was just an ad and not read it.”
What is the ‘Rosa Parks seat?’
The seat is a symbolic tribute to Black civil rights activist Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, on Dec. 1, 1955. Her civil disobedience catapulted the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was a historic event in the Civil Rights movement.
Today, the metro honors Rosa Parks with the reserved seat tribute on buses and other public transit, usually during February, which is Black History Month, or near the anniversary of Parks’ act. The seat is supposed to be left unoccupied to urge folks to reflect on her courageous act against segregation. While the signs began popping up on trains for the first time this year, the gesture has been around for a while.
In a post uploaded to the r/mildlyinteresting subreddit, one user shared a photo of such a sign in 2022. It was not without its controversies. One top comment read, “So they’re telling you where you can’t sit in honor of a woman who ignored people who told her where she couldn’t sit.”
However, one user fact-checked them: “Rosa Parks wasn’t told where she couldn’t sit and sat down. She was sitting in the black section of the bus, when the bus got crowded, the white section had no remaining seats – by law of the time, when that happens, a black person must give up their seat to any white person that wants to sit down.
“The difference is important. No one told her she couldn’t sit there. They told her that she only could sit there if no white man wanted to sit there,” they wrote.
Is that true?
The big misconception about Rosa Parks
Most folks think that Parks was in a seat reserved for whites only, and that she sat down because she was “tired.” However, Parks, a lifelong activist, was seated in the row behind the section reserved for white passengers. When the bus began filling up and white passengers boarded, the driver told Parks to move even further back. She refused and said she was not in a seat for whites, according to the National Archives. She was then arrested, kickstarting the boycott that had a major impact on the Civil Rights movement.
The Mary Sue reached out to Nola via email.
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