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For My Dear Friends,

To all of you who survive the daily commute of your 9-5 grind with strength and composure, whether by car, bus, trolley or train, if you do not have the opportunity (or misfortune) to commute via the New York City subway system, you have missed out on the following experiences that I, a faithful though bitter, daily customer of the MTA and its orange line have been able to witness first hand within the past 4 days:

MONDAY -
A strange looking, pale as vampire, tall, spindly, Caucasian man sprints to jump on my 8:16 train and consequently gets caught between the doors. Instead of trying to either retrieve himself or thrust himself forward so we may proceed, he HANGS THERE lifeless with his head down, one arm and one leg in the car and the other pair out. He looks up in despair, thrashes about for a minute like a trapped mouse and hangs again as we all watch in befuddlement.

Finally the doors release momentarily and he rushes in, collapses on his hands and knees, sighing, looking as if he had just orgasmed or escaped a wild boar. He then begins to pace up and down the train car in front of me stumbling left and right from the turbulence as we all hold our knees in, wary that he’s just another nutcase with a contagious disease. Then he whips out a book and as the man next to me leaves, he settles aside me, breathing heavily but reading serenely. Now, whenever anyone reads ANYTHING next to me, I can’t help but read along with them (an annoying social habit of mine). So I glance over and realize…HE IS READING MANDARIN?? What the f*&ck?! Of course, due to what he mistakenly interprets as ‘socialization’ from me, he smiles and leans the book towards me as if encouraging we read together! I give him a ‘what is wrong with you?’ stare and look away, dignified.

THEN, it hits me – he IS a certified nutcase…the mandarin language is read from the back cover to the front cover, and from the right page to the left, the exact opposite of how the western hemisphere reads. And here this oddity was, probably off his medication for days, reading books in mandarin, most likely thinking it was written in Hieroglyphics, clearly ignorant to the fact that he has no idea what he’s reading and feeling morally glorified in sharing it with his oriental co-passenger. In his demented (albeit blissfully ignorant) microcosm, just another wonderful day in the neighborhood.

TUESDAY -
I am late. Again. My hair is wet and I’m dreading my miserable, mundane, hygienically criminal commute. I have my 2 week old trash bag in my hands, running down 5 flights of stairs because my elevator is surprisingly non-functional for the third time in two weeks. I’m flying down floors 5, 4 then. . .BAMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!. I opened the door to the stairwell on floor 3 and run smack dab into my 4″9, 325 lb, 65 yr old widowed neighbor. My trash bag flies out of my hand, leaking putrid-ness on the floor, my face is frozen in mutilated shock, embarrassment and DISGUST, and I creep along the wall praying that I can collect myself to get away fast enough, apologize to her, bend down to collect my bag of amoeba-fied waste and there…there it was…face to crotch…no pants, no panties, but a proudly worn geriatric diaper in XXXL to fit her 325 lb incontinent and presently naked lower half.

WEDNESDAY-
I caught the 8 am train. All is well. This means I arrive at the office at 8:37 so I can have an extra 20 minutes to continue “filing” my “documents” into the paper shredder. The train car is empty save for 3 other passengers. At the following stop a massive 640 lb obese child of god thunders his way in and since I am seated at the row closest to the door, although there are probably 67 empty seats through out the car, he rests his clogged arteries and polluted ventricular system next to me, taking up the remaining half of our bench. He then turns and looks at me, with eyelids just as fat his fingers and says, “That’s a very pretty dress you have on ma’am. Be careful not to open your legs on the train today.”

THURSDAY-
Same shit. Different day. The M train is 20 minutes behind schedule. I’ve been sweating like a pig and my feet are swollen bigger than a woman in her second trimester. Why? Because of my liver I suppose. My doctor attributes all my health issues to my liver. I still don’t know what this means. No seats left on the local train. We are all miserable and will violently assault when provoked. Time pities us and passes us by. We are brought to 53 and Lexington Ave. where a grown man, exceeding 6 feet in height, boards my car with his baseball cap, sunglasses secured around his neck, reading glasses on, and backpack strapped with a water bottle on the side. “Good morning fellow passengers!” he sings with a heavy tongue and lisp, “I’d like to go to Macy’s today…can someone come with me?” Silence, as we attempt to ignore his outrageous morning cheer delivered with speech impediments and gusto. He turns to a woman probably in her forties and says, “Will you come with me?”

“No” she says, “but I will tell u how to get there”.

“Ok.” And he smiles, with one wandering eyeball and a little bit of drool puddling at the corners of his mouth. “And then will YOU come with me? Because I like what you’re wearing,” he says as he turns to a business man in a full suit while eyeing his wardrobe in amazement.

“No, I’m sorry, I have to be at the office,” the businessman replies politely but staunchly. “Ok,” says this overgrown boy scout with a never waning smile, “Then I will borrow your book right?” he asks, as he turns to another woman reading. “Well, honey, you can borrow it as soon as I’m finished reading it,” she replies as the first person to return his smile and sincerity.

“OK GREAT!!!” he screams in excitement then, suddenly, his face falls, his eyes droop, and he reaches to fiddle with the sunglasses tied around his neck with his ‘easy reach’ cord. “B-b-but…when I get to Macy’s,” he stammers, “I, um, well …I- I just don’t know what to buy..what should I buy?” Silence again. And I suspiciously peer over my right shoulder, yanked from my position as the outside observer. All eyes were on me, and I realized: Crap. It’s my turn to respond to this day camper isn’t it? So I look him in the eye, drool now brimming over his bottom lip, sadness saturating his face, and I say to him, with as much sincere excitement as I can muster, and as big a smile as I can beam underground on this subway car, “How about a brand new leather jacket for the fall?”

“YEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” he screams, shaking from excitement, as a light bulb goes off in his head, and the life comes back to his eyes, and all is right in his world, right now, at 9:02 am this morning. And he is silenced for the duration of the ride, lost in the glory of what may come on his adventurous path towards Macy’s, with leather jackets and edible treats swimming around the daydream bubbles in his head as he stares off to one corner of the car, catatonic.

A sudden tranquility descends upon us commuters because, although our battle through the day has not yet started, it is still Thursday, 2 days before a long weekend, and on this day, we have all participated in the sheer, genuine happiness of one innocent little soul.

God bless.

Love,
Marge

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MAN: “Yeah? Well I don’t need to be hearing girls talking about their stripper parties and such while I’m trying to have a conversation!”

FRIEND: “Well you could have just asked us nicely to quiet down, there was no need to use such language in front of children.”

MAN: “You think I know nothin’ about children? I have fifteen of my own!”

The argument died down, and the man continued his conversation on the phone. We picked up this little bit.

MAN: “Yeah man, my two daughters are meeting me at the platform. *laugh* Yeah, they won’t be talking when I get them to punch their faces in.”

FRIEND: “Oh? Is that a threat sir?”

MAN: “Excuse me?”

FRIEND: “Is that a threat?”

MAN: “No, it’s a PROMISE.”

As we neared the platform, knowing that this was the last stop, and that the man was still on the train, we didn’t want to take any chances that these ridiculous accusations were actually going to come true. Digging into my bag, I started saying “Oh no, oh no, my glasses aren’t in here.” I wear glasses only to see far away things, such as the people on a stage at a show. Winking and whispering that I was only faking to buy a bit of time, they played along, saying that I wouldn’t be able to see the show if I didn’t have them, was I sure that they weren’t in there, etc. As the doors opened, we continued to “search” as the man exited the train. Finally “finding my glasses” we left the train onto the platform, the man with the booming voice and his “two daughters that were going to beat us up” nowhere in sight.

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I was part of a small group of office workers based out of New Jersey on our way to Ground Zero. We were accompanied in our subway car by three other weary commuters.
Five intimidating looking men and one woman entered our car. Silence filled the air as glances shot back and fourth between us. The newcomers appeared to be sizing us up, deciding if we were a good hit. The tension was tight and fear was in the air. One of the men shot a glance at the others and nodded his head. We all braced for the worst.
Instead of the attack we expected, the group broke out into an amazing acappella that blew us all out of our seats. The talent was amazing, the harmonizing flawless, and the delivery one to be remembered.
As doors opened for the next stop, we dropped a tip in the hat with appreciation and relief.

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I was riding the 7 line home from Shea after another debilitating loss to the Yankees. There had been as many Yankee fans at the game as Met fans and as the train pulled out of Willet’s Point, tension was riding high. An argument broke out between two packs of teenagers and I was kicking myself for dragging my kids onto the subway instead of driving to the game. The teenagers were arguing, naturally, over who was the better team – the Mets or the Yankees. And they decided to settle it by having a …dance off. So right there, on the subway car floor, kids spun on their hands and on their heads and by the time we pulled into the city, everyone was having so much fun,no one remembered there had ever been an argument.

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