My Day on the Subway

For those of you who know me – you lucky bastards – you know that I was born and raised in the rolling hills and green pastures of Suburbia. Sometimes, my experiences as a Philadelphia worker and inhabitant have been both eye-opening and humorous. Well, my most recent is one for the books.

While I am sure that some sort of public transit is available in the suburbs, it was none that I was ever aware of. I was once on the “El”, not “L”, on a Sunday afternoon while a friend was practically holding my hand for the entire trip. But, yesterday was my official first day on the subway.

I walked the two blocks to The Clothespin. Note: don’t make the same mistake I did. The Clothespin is not a trendy boutique or a dry cleaner. It is an actual giant sculpture in the shape of a clothespin. I don’t know how I never noticed that one before. (Oh right, I work for the devil and never leave the one-block radius of my cube during daylight.)

So, I descended the steps and found my Blue Line Westbound track, following the explicit instructions of my coworkers. Now, I don’t want to alarm anyone, but I have some appalling news. There are huge mice living in the tracks of the 15th Street subway. Don’t overreact, but there are maybe dozens of them. I plan to contact some higher-ups I am acquainted with in the tourism industry to make them aware of this problem. My tentative plan is to work a Rodent Free Transit Initiative into the Summer 2007 Marketing Plan.

After I recovered from my shock, I rode the elusive underground train to my destination with relative ease. My return, however, was another story. After I exited the train to return to work, I gave myself props for doing so well. I took in a deep breath of urinal-scented air and smiled. Just as I was about to break out the Mary Tyler Moore arms-out-twirl, I was confronted with another obstacle. There were two teenagers fist fighting at the top of the stairs – right under the sacred Clothespin! No one can get past the brawl so we are all just standing on the steps watching. Instead of trying to break up the quarrel, people were saying things like, “Can you get out of the way? I’ve got places to be!” So, apparently no one was concerned that two thirteen-year-olds were pummeling each other at 2:00 on a sunny Wednesday afternoon; they were merely concerned with their choice of location.

While I was waiting on the stairs, a crazy person ran into me at full speed and inadvertently head-butted me. As he proceeded to yell at me for not zippering my bag (which didn’t have a zipper), I noticed something drop out of the corner of my eye. I looked down to find pigeon excretion on my sleeve. That’s right – the rat of the bird world crapped on me while a crazy person was preaching street smarts at the top of his lungs. For about two minutes, I shifted my dumbfounded gaze from soiled arm, to crazy ranter, to soiled arm, and so on. Thankfully, the two fighters finally ended their squabble with a man hug, and we all walked to our respective destinations.

I walked to work, scrubbed my shirt, and dreamed of what it would be like to be able to fly.