On board, and keep walking

This is a public service announcement:

When boarding the train, walk to the center of the care before sitting. This will allow passengers boarding after you to find a seat and will result in a smoother flow of traffic. Sitting in the first available seat - when there are many others beyond it - will cause a logjam of passengers waiting behind you while you stand in the aisle waiting for someone to stand up and let you in.

Thank you for your attention.

On board with a stench

While taking the train into and from work each day has its drawbacks, there are definitely perks to riding during rush hour.  Typically, the people you ride with are impeccably groomed business men and women who are quiet and respectful of others.  Notice the word "typically."  Yesterday was anything but.

On the way into New York, we had to make an unscheduled stop and pick up a swarm of people in Newark because of a broken down train in front of us.  Naturally, this happened on a rare morning where I was able to sit in a three-person seat with just one other, normal-sized human.  The herd of people - waiting on the platform they were about 4-5 rows deep - pushed their way in, and I saw the typical (there's that word again) types find seats in front of me. 

And then I spotted him.  I large man, sloppily dressed, out of breath, and moving towards me. As soon as I saw him, I knew he would end up sitting next to me.  That is my luck; I attract fat dudes.

I let him into the middle seat, he took off his coat, and I smelled it.  This was B.O. on an order I am not accustomed. Walking in Penn Station and riding on the subway, where homeless people often reside for hours, you will smell something like this.  But an experienced commuter can avoid these smells; yesterday morning, I was pressed up against it like tootsie rolls in a pinata. And I prayed that someone would whack me free.

Naturally, I wondered how anyone who was ostensibly riding into the city for work could smell so bad, so early in the morning. Had he not showered? Had he worked up a sweat ... walking through the aisle of the train?  What was this large fellow up to at 7:00?  I decided to stop wondering and instead sit with my hand over my face, turned the other way, happily thinking back to times when I had experienced other questionable smells: Wading through liquid pig fat on Interstate 40 for a story? Not as bad.  Driving through Richmond where it wreaks of sulfur? A meadow of pleasantness.  Using the bathroom at any Bojangle's in America? I welcome a return visit. This man beat them all. Congratulations.  I hate you.

On board with nail clippings

I saw something today I never thought I'd see. The lady next to me on the subway this afternoon clipped her finger nails. On the subway. Next to me. (I repeated it to make sure you heard me.) When I say she sat next to me, I mean she was sitting on the bench next to me, with nothing separating us. And finger nails separating from fingers.

Part of me wanted to pretend that a clipping hit me in the face and start screaming. I would have sold it too: I'd cut my face to draw a little blood, produced fake tears, the whole nine yards. All of this would have culminated the only way it could: lawsuit. I'm thinking $4 million.

But to reiterate: woman on subway. Clipped nails. Next to me. Gross.

On board with rags

A typical morning rush hour commuter, if he or she is not resting with eyes closed, reads either the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. These are the reading materials of choice, with an occasional Newark Star-Ledger thrown in for good measure. This morning, however, I sat between two people reading exciting alternatives: the man on my left was reading the classic Batman graphic novel, The Long Halloween, and the woman on my right was reading US Weekly or Star Crap or some horrible gossip magazine. Naturally, as I have read The Long Halloween, I was drawn to the gossip rag.

Now, I feel the need to dwell on one of the stories in the magazine because it smacks of hypocrisy, and the one thing that turns me off more than anything is hypocrisy. (In related news, I hate cheaters. Go Yankees!)  The story was on how Demi Moore stays young. It included a sidebar with seven tips from the star herself on how she stays young: Hydrate, moisturize, exfoliate, marry someone half your age, etc.  However, the story also included before and after photos showing the incredible plastic surgery she had last year.  

Now, I try to stay off of soap boxes because I find them slippery and they leave my shoes bubbly, but this smacks me as patently disingenuous and dishonest.  This would be like you saying the key to your good writing has been studying English in college and forcing yourself to write a little bit each day ... while leaving out the fact that you take large, unattributed portions of your essays from F. Scott Fitzgerald.  For some reason this made me really angry this morning. 

Maybe I'm just irritable because yet another baseball hero has taken my faith in humanity, chewed it up, and after 40 minutes in the bathroom, turned it into a steaming pile of broken promises and yesterday's corn chowder.*

*Full disclosure: This analogy is taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.

Butch Cassidy is nothing without his Sundance Kid

Of course it would happen on the morning when the wind chill was -1.  -1 AMERICAN degrees.

Waiting for the train this morning, the disembodied voice of the friendly train station lady announced that all trains in and out of Penn Station were running 20-30 minutes behind. Thankfully, I was able to step into my train and escape the skin-punishing, bone-chilling cold at approximately the time NJ Transit promises in its train schedules. But, of course, after moving a few miles up the line, the conductor announced that the delays were worse than we had been led to believe. Apparently, due to a broken down train in the tunnel, there was but one track for all trains entering and leaving the major hub in Manhattan. 

In other words, bad news.

So, after we waiting for a while outside Newark, our conductor told us we were being re-routed to Hoboken. As you may recall, this had happened to me before, in reverse, last year, but I remain totally ignorant of the PATH train and their routes, so upon reaching Hoboken, I got on a train that took me near Penn Station and had to back-track back to my office. (I would learn later that this could have been a much shorter trip, but the PATH website was blissfully unhelpful.)

Oh, and I had to get out on Broadway and find my way back to Penn Station - and of course, since it was cold, I headed out the wrong way and had to walk more than I should have. 

The Highlight:

There was an irritating guy with a backpack - it's always backpacks - who continued to bump into me and a woman next to me on the PATH train. Oblivious to the natural law stating that two bodies cannot occupy the same space, he repeatedly beat us with his backpack, like the clumsy adolescent who is not in control of his newly-large body and bumps into walls and other things because he is not used to his hulking shoulders.  This guy, however, was just annoying.

At one point, the woman and I turned in towards one another to shoot him a dirty look. It was like something out of a sit-com: We turned at preciously the same time and turned back at the same time as well. I wanted so much to make eye contact and share that "If you punch him in the face, I'll punch him in the stomach" look, but she was too annoyed to have any fun on the ride. So alas, the man remained unpunched. Another missed opportunity in the annals of NY commuting.

On board with my furry friends

I've noticed this new middle-aged lady - let's call her Vick Furry* - that wears an expensive fur coat every morning, complemented by a wonderfully huge fur hat, like the ones worn by Soviets in spy movies. I mean, this thing is incredible. I find myself staring at it and wondering what waiting for the train with an animal on my head would be like. I think I would pretend it were still alive and talk to it. Because really there isn't much else to do but stand around and shiver.

*This is joke for comic book dorks. If you don't get it, you're probably cooler than me.

At any rate, hat or not, she inevitably gets into the train every morning in front of me. She has a buddy waiting for her, and so she stops right inside the door, he gets up to let her in, and I'm left waiting behind the Soviet ice princess and her boy toy. For those of you who have rushed to get into trains at rush hour, you know how precious few seats there are, and waiting behind someone while watching the rest of the car fill in the empty seats ... there just are not words for the frustration. Actually there are: I hate her.

I'm most certainly not a PETA sympathizer, but everything about this woman makes me want to scream. Keeping the line of people behind her waiting for her to de-animalize her entire body; flirting with all the old men around her; talking loudly while the rest of us on the train are reading newspapers or sleeping. Maybe I just need more sleep.

Stop looking at me, you loveless loser

Being the incredible husband that I am, I picked up some flowers for my wife on the way home from the train station yesterday. From the time I left the store until I got home 7 minutes later, people shot me looks. There was the guy in the car who looked at me, his face seeming to say, "What a loser. He bought flowers for someone. I only have to pull up in my awesome sports car and invite a woman to my whites-only country club and I am golden." Then there were the middle-aged women, whose husbands have long since given up on romance. They each shot me a smile as if to say, " If only a hip young man would buy me some purple flowers. My thighs ache with hope." All of this is to say, do not buy flowers and then walk with them for a couple of blocks. Drive.