Commuterrant

Will Commute for Blog, Part 2

I landed a new job, thank goodness. Even better, I will still have the pleasure of commuting to work - but no more Green Line! I'll be taking the Red Line, just five short stops to Kendall Square. I'm sure I'll still have plenty of T-insanity to blog about, although I will miss the particular brand of insanity that only the Green Line can offer.

Until May 30, I am considering myself retired, as I left the old job last Friday. Retirement is not all it's cracked up to be. I have started having conversations with the dog, and am spending way too much money.

Jason Needs a Helmet

There was a full-page ad on the back of this morning's Metro, touting the United Way's "Turn It Up & Get Active" campaign to fight childhood obesity.

The ad consisted of a giant photo of Jason, an active young man performing a cool skateboard move. But Jason was not wearing a helmet. I'm all for fighting childhood obesity, but when you fracture your skull and your brains are splayed out across the skateboard park, is it really going to matter how toned and healthy you are?

Miracle on the Red Line

On Wednesday, I parked at Alewife and boarded the Red Line as usual. After about ten minutes on the train, I began fumbling with my money and credit cards in my jacket pocket. I usually keep those doo-dads in my pants pockets, but I was all gussied up for a conference at the Hynes, and it so happened that the suit I was wearing had no pockets. This scintillating detail is important - trust me.

I decided that I should move my wad of cash and credit cards from my jacket to my wallet, which lives at the bottom of my backpack, and is never used. My jacket was not going to be with me at the conference, but my backpack was. So I did the transfer of the credit cards, and pulled out the money... it seemed odd to me that there was only about eight dollars; I had just gone the bank the day before and should have had a lot more. I was rooting around in my pockets looking for the cash when a woman bolted out of her seat and came over to me.

"Did you park on the fifth floor at Alewife?" she asked. I told her I had, thinking she was going to criticize my parking methods or tell me I had run over her foot. She said, "Did you lose some money?" she asked.

"Yes!" I said. "A bunch of 20s, folded up." And she pulled it out and handed it to me. She said she found it on the ground and saw me walking ahead of her, but wasn't sure I had dropped it and wasn't sure what to do. I was speechless. What are the odds that this particular woman would find my lost money, that we would end up on the same car of the train, that I would discover that the cash was missing while still on the train, and that she would realize that I was the owner?

"Thank you," I said. "Thank you so much." She said, "If I hadn't found you I was going to give it to charity." It was sixty dollars. I think I know what I'm going to do with it.

See Something? Say Something - or Else

Today, the T-bots were out in full force - armed police officers, day-glo-vest-adorned workers, and others - distributing future litter, bright orange pamphlets entitled "Trust Your Instincts and Be Prepared."

The pamphlet was all about seeing something, saying something, being vigilant, defeating the terrorists and the like. While reading the pamphlet on the T, I got to the part where it read "....You may witness something suspicious, such as:

• a passenger behaving oddly"

And started laughing out loud, as it's a rare day when I don't witness a passenger behaving oddly on the T. The woman needlessly trying to pour the remnants of a giant bag of potato chips into a snack-size ziploc bag. The snowflake-cutter. The scratch-your-ankle-til-it-bleeds guy. The pickers, the singers, the full-course meal eaters. And plus, I know they want me to say something, but I'm never clear on what I'm supposed to say, and to whom.

I quickly stopped laughing out loud when I realized that my behavior might be seen as odd and I might have to then explain myself to the watchful passengers as well as the authorities.

The next bullet item/example of suspicious behavior to watch for was:

• a group operating in an orchestrated or rehearsed manner

I pondered this, as I had just witnessed a odd assemblage of people engaging in a well-orchestrated handing out of pamphlets. It seemed rehearsed, and a bit out of place. Should I say something?
 

All-New Worst Commute Ever

Previously, I wrote about my worst commute ever, circa 1991, but now I have a new winner!

Yesterday, I boarded the Green Line at Arlington, heading for Park Street. Miraculously, the train was quite empty and I took a seat near the front of the car. Then...I smelled something. I looked down, and at my feet was a pile of newspapers, placed there to soak up the gallons of beer-scented vomit that someone had disgorged on the floor. The smell was unbearable. The fact that my shoes were in resting in vomit was intolerable. I got up and moved to the middle of the car, and stood over the stairwell.

A minute passed, while I focused on trying to learn to breathe again. I then felt an entire human body pressed up against me. Not so odd when the train is full, but this train had a lot of free space. A man squeezed past me, shoving my entire body in the process. He took the step below where I was standing and turned around to face me, a mere 7/8" from my face. I looked at him. He looked at me.

I looked around, and there was another woman holding the pole on the other side of the stairwell, but neither of us was blocking the stairs. The man muttered something like, "pushing me...motherfucker." He stared at me again. I looked away.

He then lovingly stroked the dangling hand of the man who was sitting in the first seat facing the stairwell. The hand-owner moved his hand away and Mr. Shove waved at him. I then used my powers of deductive reasoning to determine that he was mentally ill.

As the train pulled into Park Street, he addressed me directly. "Push me next time, I'll break both your legs." And then, to punctuate his statement, he concluded with a "Yeah."

As a bespectacled, graying, Jewish lesbian/stepmother living in the suburbs, I often find myself in the middle of violent altercations, but this was, indeed, the first time someone has threated to break both my legs on the T.

Also, I know that my safety is the MBTA's #1 concern, but I didn't feel very safe at that particular moment. I was definitely in the act of "seeing something" and wanted to "say something" but there were no officials nearby to whom I could say something. So I ran to the Red Line, thankful to have two working legs, so that I could quickly escape Mr. Shove and his unwarranted wrath.

Personal Grooming - in Stereo!

Yesterday morning, while on the Red Line with a coworker, I heard a vaguely familiar "tss tss tss" sound to my left. My neighbor was filing her nails, with nail dust flying everywhere. Ten minutes later, I heard the now-not-as-vaguely familiar "tss tss tss" sound on my right. Yet another woman, filing her nails on the T.

Here's a good rule of thumb - when selecting a particular activity to do during your commute, decide whether or not it will spray any form of your genetic effluvia on your fellow commuters. This includes but is not limited to: filing or clipping your nails,  brushing your hair, shaving, picking your nose and/or changing a tampon. If so, please hold off until you're not in public.

A Really Bad Seatmate

Today, I had the pleasure of sitting next to an extremely annoying commuter with very bad commuter manners.

She got on the Red Line several stops after I did, and pulled out an apple. After peeling the sticker off of the apple, which I can only assume was unwashed, she disposed of the sticker by affixing it to her seat. She proceeded to eat the apple, chewing with her mouth open, mere inches from my ear. I do not allow even my most intimate friends to chew mere inches from ear. Especially with their mouths open. Apple splatter rained down upon us.

After she finally finished chewing her apple, she was not content to sit still. She pulled out a compact, and began applying powder to her face, while extraneous powder dust flew about; I'm fairly certain several grams flew up my nose.

Then, she began quickly picking the skin off of her nails. Pick, pick, pick, and began flicking it all over. Flick, flick, flick.

After finishing that activity, she then got on her cell phone, which, inexplicably worked underground. I had the pleasure of listening to her leave a detailed message for her friend about their meeting later, which she ended by saying said get-together would be "gabberific." Gabberific?

I got off the train at Park Street, leaving Miss Fidget to her next 8,400 activities.

Why couldn't she be like other commuters, and pick ONE THING to do during the ride? One thing! Read a magazine, a book, the Metro. Sit still. Think. Sleep. Listen to an iPod. Her endless fidgeting, chewing, powdering, picking and flicking made me want to slip her a Xanax.

Sorceress on the Red Line

A woman boarded the Red Line train yesterday and began making a speech in a language that I could not identify. She adddressed the crowd with great flair, focusing particularly on a woman sitting near me. Her oratory skills were fantastic; I wish I could understand what she was saying. Every now and then, she'd throw in an obscenity in English:

"Nas ka tu eskay FUCK. Et ma ta BULLSHIT."

On and on she went, gesticulating with great fervor. I listened for a while, then she moved on, making her way down the car to address another group of commuters.

The woman sitting near me said, to no one in particular, "I think she just put a spell on me."

Monsoon Alewife

Yesterday's predicted Nor'easter, which was hyped so heavily that the kids' school was cancelled, developed into a persistent, but harmless, rain.

I drove to Alewife and, hoping against hope, looked for a parking spot on level 3. I like parking on this particular level because at night, when I leave the garage, I'm close to the double-super-secret exit, where I can pay quickly, drive down the ramp, and sit in traffic waiting to enter the access road to Route 2 for 45 minutes.

I drove to my usual, preferred parking area and it looked pretty full. I was feeling defeated, but then I noticed one lonely, available spot amidst a row of cars. I pulled in, and instantly realized why the spot was left empty. In this parking spot, it was pouring. It was not pouring outside; it was not pouring anywhere else in the garage. But it was pouring on my car. And underneath my car, a lagoon was quickly forming.

Not wanting to give up my prized spot, I gathered my things and got out of the car. Water drenched my head during the 2 seconds it took me to leave the car. I started to walk away and looked back. Sheets of water were falling on the roof of my car; it looked like the roof was about to cave in. I think I was parked under a sump pump for the Fresh Pond Reservoir, mysteriously placed there by the authorities after they decided to drain the overflow into the Alewife garage. So I made the tough decision to abandon my spot for a more arid one.   

Why must it rain inside the Alewife garage? It's a GARAGE. And it doesn't stop at the garage; it rains in the station, where the commuters are. I cannot think of one other building in which it rains. We would not accept rain in any other building. It doesn't rain in Stop & Shop in Lexington. It doesn't rain in 10 St. James Avenue in Back Bay. It doesn't even rain in the Park Street station. So why must it rain here?

I Feel Safe on the T

The other night, I ran downstairs to the Red Line platform at Park Street and was greeted with the overwhelming smell of smoke. There was a haze in the air, and it literally smelled like a house was burning down. But we were underground, and there were no houses to be found.

The air was so bad, I considered holding my breath for what turned out to be a 15-minute wait for the train (thank God I didn't). I also thought about my options should the situation worsen, perhaps by a burning house inexplicably appearing on the platform. I looked for an emergency exit, but couldn't find one. Instead, I found this:

An emergengy exit. We are doomed.