Since the “new” job requires me to take 6 different rides on the MBTA, I get a much broader perspective of commuter consciousness than I did previously. Here are some recent highlights.
1. The Meathead who reminded me of Marcel Proust
Yesterday afternoon, getting off the Red Line and heading to the Orange Line at Downtown Crossing. As I’m walking in the tunnel, the guy a head of me, an angry musclehead in a wife beater makes it a point to punch every metal door he passes, sending a resounding echo of his brute masculinity down the passage. Once on the train, it is my good fortune to find this prime specimen of machismo only a few steps away from me, similarly pressed against the multitudes. It so happened that I was reading my Proust, and I chanced to see this hulk dismissively shaking his head at the predicament (presumably) of having to stand on a crowded train. Meanwhile, Marcel wept over the realization that he’d been going to fancy parties instead of mourning the loss of his grandmother, lamenting how their old way of communicating through a series of knocks on the partition separating them in the Grand Hotel at Balbec would never again suffice:
I knew that I might knock now, even louder, and that I should hear no response, that my grandmother would never come again. And I asked nothing more of God, if a paradise exists, than to be able, there, to knock on that wall with the three little raps which my grandmother would recognise among a thousand, and to which she would give those answering knocks which meant: “Don’t fuss, little mouse, I know you’re impatient, but I’m just coming,” and that he would let me stay with her througout eternity, which would not be too long for the two of us.
Fitting, no? After our meaty friend got off the T, the guys who’d been standing around him began a discussion in which they considered how much damage he would have been able to inflict upon them had he for some reason punched them.
2. The 25mph Dachshund
If that wasn’t enough action for one commute, on the 32, as we made our way out of Forest Hills, I and many of my fellow passengers, spotted a miniature Dachshund jogging in the middle of Hyde Park Ave. As a miniature dachshund owner, I felt a sense of helpless urgency watching the poor animal play matador with cars. It took a few blocks before anybody on the sidewalk noticed the little guy, and when they did, the dog, hearing footfalls behind it, broke into an impossibly fast (for a dachshund) sprint. To give you a frame of reference to the speed, a real literal frame of reference I should add, I was watching these events through the bus window as I was standing in the aisle. Again, the bus, like the train was crowded, so I couldn’t reposition myself fully to follow the events as closely as I would have liked, but as the bus moved past the traffic and picked up speed along the emptier part of Hyde Park Ave, the dog began its sprint, and this is when I lost sight of it, because it moved beyond my view through the window. At this point it was moving faster than the bus. I finally caught sight of it again flying up Walk Hill Ave. That dog must have been going 20-25 miles per. I repeat, this was a miniature dachshund pulling that speed. That’s like the Hicham El Guerrouj of dachshunds. Hope it got home all right.
Finally one more.
3. Yes, in fact, I have met him
This morning on the 32. The only people talking were a man and a woman. The man was wearing some type of fez, and was nice enough, but kind of pontificating about some religion, I couldn’t catch which. The woman was polite, not really pushing the issue, but not blowing him off. He asked her if she’d seen the Republican debate the night before. No, she hadn’t. He told her she didn’t miss much and then bemoaned the lack of character among the current crop of candidates. His list of grievances was enumerated, which included some having to do with Barack Obama. After he’d gone on for some time, she mentioned that she was voting for Obama. So he challenged her on this. She mentioned among other things, that she thought he had a lot of integrity. Well, he asked, did she know him? This was, of course, asked with the expectation that she would say no and that he could then proceed to say that she really had no idea whether he had integrity, BUT, unfortunately for him, she said in so off-hand a manner as to seem as though she were talking about her neighbor, and therefore her statement came across as impossible to be a lie, “I’ve met him.” Stunned, he stammered out questions seeking details. But he was out of luck. She casually mentioned a friend from Chicago who invited her out there for a campaign meeting or something.
Fez man was so caught off guard I almost started laughing. I’ve never seen a man backtrack so quickly. This revelation occured at the same place as the dachshund turned off Hyde Park Ave the day before, and in that short span of time between then and before we got off at Forest Hills he had pretty much told her that he’d be voting for Obama too.