Strangers on a Train

For my first story, I have quite a doozie...  One thing that you must get clear is that to a New Yorker, time isn't our motivating factor for being in a rush....being in a rush is.  And so when some tourist from North Dakota or some other bumblefuck state stops to look up at the tall buildings, walks four-wide across the sidewalk with his family of obesity statistics, or the worst, leisurely walks at a slow pace for the sake of enjoying the walk, we get quite upset...or at least I do.

This wasn't a tourist, but having had these experiences and as my motto towards dawdling is: "If you don't know, I'll tell you!" this fits into the same category.  And so here goes...

For no real reason, I was in quite a hurry to get home. After a long day, I am always agitated by the tiresome commute from Stamford Connecticut to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The sooner I can get home and away from the dealings of the city, the better I feel.  

My commute is probably something that needs to be laid out here. It is about an hour and a half, and while definitely not the worst commute in the world, it is certainly a major pain in the ass...specifically my ass.  Every day I have to take a train or cab to 125th street (20-30 mins), take the Metro-North New Haven line express or local to Stamford (40-60 mins), then wait for a shuttle to bring me to what is probably one of the farthest points from the train station in Stamford (20 mins).  And I have to coordinate the schedules between the three modes to get anywhere on time.  This is the same in reverse on the way home. If it was as exhausting to read as it was to do, then you feel my pain, and somehow i feel a little bit better about the whole thing.

So as you can imagine, the day had been long and I was ready to retreat to my cave in my 4th story walk up in the East 80's.  I was running down to the subway at 125th street and everything was going quite smoothly: the bottleneck from the train trying to exit the platcform was avoided because I was let out right next to the stiars, there were no crazies threatening to spit on me or otherwise causing nuisance on 125th street, and I had done that thing where you take the metro card out with time to spare so you can swipe and walk through the turnstyle with one continuous motion.  

I had made it down the first flight of stairs to the first landing without a hitch, and then it happened.  The right side of the staircase was completely full with people that were coming off a train that I wanted to be on, and the left side of the staircase was almost empty save a few people walking up and one unfortunate woman moving slowly into position to get a verbal beating from an impatient and otherwise cranky New Yorker, namely: me.  I stopped at the top of the stiars behind this woman, who from behind looked like a short Latina who should otherwise know better than to stand defiantly at the top of a staircase as a train that people are trying to catch is getting ready to leave.  I danced around her, but it seemed that the few people on our left, walking up the stairs were too frequent to be able to pass the lady...Then I noticed she was stalling because she was putting something into her backpack...This set me off. There wasn't anywhere else that she thought she could have done this...HELLO???  Are you stupid? Did you just get to New York? Shouldn't you know better??

I yelled as loud as i could, pretty much, "Move It!!"

This was about the time that I realized what the woman was putting into her backpack: A Hershey's bar.  Then as she slowly turned with a look of absolute terror, I realized that she was, in fact, not a woman. She was probably an eleven-year-old girl. I could see that she had forgotten to breathe out of fear. Then as soon as she saw who was behind her, I guess all fears were confirmed and she bolted down the steps, looking back the entire time like a bimbo in a horror flick. As she landed on the first platform with trains going northbound, she had not paid attention to the step down and tripped onto one knee. Mind you, she was still staring at me with that same look of horror. She then stumbled onto the train, safe at last.  

It was the second time that week that I had managed to accidentally put the fear of God into a small child...

Now was my turn to run down the stairs in fear. This was a much stronger fear. It was that of the possibility that anybody had seen my horrendous exchange.  I quickly made it down the now unclogged stairwell and walked all the way to the end of the platform so as to avoid any judgmental glares.  Not that I didn't deserve them at the time.