Category Archives: fun times on the subway

The Case for Gagging Subway Passengers

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Sometimes something will make me rethink my distaste for children. I’ll be watching the episode of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” where Jacqueline gives birth to baby Nicholas, and I’ll think, “Wow, I’ll bet that one is a lot less ugly than her daughter, Ashley, was.” (Because seriously, all through the episode where Ashley was doing a photoshoot and kept complaining that the photographer wasn’t getting any good shots, I kept waiting for Jacqueline to tell her the problem is actually her face.) But Nicholas, even hours after his birth, was a lot less alien-esque than almost every baby I’ve seen recently, and it made me question whether I was getting soft on children.

And then, a couple of days ago, I was on the downtown 4 on my way to work when someone let one rip. I don’t care how much air they have swirling around the train cars; an enclosed space is an enclosed space, and the space around me filled up with nasty-smelling air that lingered for more than a minute. This happens from time to time, and I desperately want to go around sniffing butts until I figure out who dropped the bomb, but I never have the guts. I want to scream, “I can smell your shame!”, but I’m always unwilling to draw attention to myself.

Read the rest here.

Is It Racist?

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Yesterday morning, I got to Grand Central fairly late, so the morning rush had mostly passed, and I got a comfortable spot on the train. It was held at the station for a few minutes, though, so my comfortable spot soon became cramped as more and more people came down to the platform and tried to pack themselves into the train. Just before the doors closed, a large black man crammed himself in as far as he could, but it wasn’t enough. The doors kept trying to close and then opening back up again, and the man kept thrusting his belly farther and farther into people’s backs to make room, hoping he would finally fit.

A white lady near me got annoyed finally and said, “Get out! There’s not enough room for you.” The man said, “There would be enough room if people would move in.” I disagreed with this, as I was crushed against the person next to me to the point that I couldn’t retrieve my Kindle from my bag, and I was at the point in my book where a vampire baby was about to be born to a human, so you know I would’ve done anything I could to get to it. The woman also disagreed and said, “Where am I supposed to go?! The huge empty space over there?” She was being sarcastic. The guy said, “All of the hot air coming out of you sure is taking up a lot of room.” The woman said, “Oh, great. Another one of them with an attitude.”

The black woman next to me whipped her head around to look at the white lady so fast that I could hear the wind she created whooshing by me, but . . . surely that’s not what she meant, right?

exCUUUUUZE MAAAAAAY!

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(I’m not going to make you click on the link to Examiner.com to finish the story like usual, but if you want to earn me a little cash, anyway, here’s the link. Thanks!)

The platform was crowded at Grand Central this morning, and it would’ve certainly been reasonable for me to hang back for the next train, but I could see through the windows that people weren’t moving to the center of the car to make room, and I wasn’t going to let them think that was okay.

So I pushed my way on with everyone else, and I fit just fine. The guy behind me kept rearranging himself, though, so I was getting pushed into the woman in front of me. Who, by the way, was one of those stop-immediately-inside-the-door-and-block-it-for-everyone-else types. I figured that being punched in the ribs a little is one of the most charming aspects of the morning commute, but I guess I got shoved into her one too many times, because she turned and said with the grossest pinched-nose accent, “EXCUSE ME!” Except it sound like, “exCUUUUUZE MAAAAAAY!” I was a good three inches taller than her, and I was still pressed up against her, so I looked down at her in all of her blue-eyeshadowed glory with my most intimidating face and said, “It’s not my fault, lady; I’m being pushed. Calm. The fuck. Down.“

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, yeah. “Calm the fuck down.” You think being told to calm down in an argument cuts? Insert the word fuck at 8:30 a.m.

I had to stand there next to her until we got down to Union Square, and it was uncomfortable, sure, but I felt justified, and she had luckily turned her head away from me. When the train doors opened, people left, we repositioned ourselves in different parts of the car, and I got my Kindle out to continue reading book 4 of the Twilight series. (What?) I didn’t think about her again.

And then, safely inside my office building, guess who walked into my elevator. Future work BFFs!

Although I Don’t Necessarily Want Them Touching a Seat I May Someday Sit on, Either

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The other day, I saw a man on the train so fat that his testicles bulged between his legs like a cantaloupe in the crotch of his navy blue sweatpants. I wondered how you get to a point where you’d rather sit and let everyone see your melon-shaped balls than stand and conceal them between your tree trunk thighs.

The World is Your Trash Can

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I had to run an errand mid-morning today and got on an uncrowded 4 train going uptown. At the Wall Street stop, the young mother in the seat opposite me went to one set of doors and threw her Styrofoam cup out onto the station platform. The lid came off, ice and watered-down soda remnants leaked everywhere, and she sat back down casually.

I scrunched up my face into its most disapproving and judgemental form and stared at her hard, but she didn’t look at me. No one else on the train appeared to notice what had happened, though it’s impossible that anyone missed it. I’ve seen so many people set their empty cups or bags on the floor and been disgusted, but this made that look almost polite.

Read the rest here, because I’m too busy to actually write anything of interest to you.