Train Etiquette

After re-reading the last, very long and depressing post, I decided to inject some levity. Let's discuss train etiquette in the NYC subway system.

For all intents and purposes, I have been living in Queens and commuting to the Upper East Side of Manhattan for the last week. I take the train in with the morning crowd and commute home with the second shift folks. I have ridden the subway system on numerous occasions in the past, but never with this frequency. This week I got to see my first subway rat; a little guy who was scurrying away from a cleaning crew sweeping debris from around the tracks. i have also seen some of the most bizarre individuals to be found anywhere on this planet.

Last night, I saw a gang, I really don't know what else to call them, of clowns. They were all in their late teens and early twenties and all had paint on the heads and faces that made them look like clowns. Beyond their strange decorations, their behavior was just as outlandish. They were screeching and hooting like owls, bouncing off one another on the train platform and each was carrying a stuffed animal. The plush toys ranged from white & purple teddy bears to a stuffed beach ball at least 3 feet in diameter. We (the crowd immediately surrounding me) just stared at them as they came down the stairs and rumbled down the platform out of sight.

It was actually as I stepped onto the train I was waiting for that I experienced the greatest subway fop-ah imaginable. I stepped onto the train and locked eyes with a guy sitting a third of the way down the car. Normally on the train, you're not supposed to make eye contact with anyone (they teach you that early when you start to ride the rails). Unfortunately, he looked up as I looked in and we were stuck, we broke rule number one. What made this situation even worse was that this guy was HUGE. and not huge as in obese, huge like if he stood up, I think his head would have gone through the roof of the train and the veins on his biceps were bigger than my thighs. He was a big, cut white dude, with scraggly, long dirty blonde hair and an overall look of someone recently released (or escaped) from a Siberian work camp.

The crowd packed in behind me, forcing me forward, directly towards him. I ended up having to stand, hanging onto the bar directly over this guys head. If he stood up, he would have worn my right armpit for a hat! And there I stood, praying my over-active imagination was just that, and this man was not about to pick up the nice little spanish lady next to him to be used as a club. What happened next was just over the line.

The train started rolling from 59th and Lexington Ave towards Queensboro Plaza (on the N-Train), one of the longest single stretches without a stop on the whole trip. Moments after the train rolled forward, I saw a collective scowl rip across the faces of the people packed in in front of me. It was standing room only and one by one they all made a face of pure disgust. The tsunami of grimaces pushed towards me and I was finally engulfed in the cloud of stink: someone had farted.

I"m not talking about a little poot and a giggle. NOOOOO, someone in the front third of the car dropped ass! And it wasn't just any little fart smell either. This was gas emanating from someone that had subsided on nothing but Cheetos and beer for the last 72 hours. You could smell it, you could taste it and you could feel it on your skin. Good God, we were all going to die of asphyxiation.

What scared me more than the thought of dying on the train car, trapped in a noxious cloud of ass gas, was the sudden realization that the Siberian mauler sitting practically underneath me might think that I was the one that farted! That certainly would have led to my untimely demise as the Latina was swung like a war club in my general direction. I didn't even dare look down to see if he made the same face as the cloud wafted passed us. The stench must have dissipated beyond me because I really didn't notice many other contorted faces behind me. I was one of the lucky ones. Just one more adventure this week!