Kix and Drinks

The only thing I hate carrying more than a bag is an umbrella. Sure, it keeps its bearer dry, but it’s so awkward to carry around in crowded subway car. Even someone lucky enough to get a seat has nowhere comfortable to store it during the ride. On the few occasions, like today, where the rain is so fierce that I must take one, I usually end of leaving them at work for want of not carrying them back.

In fact, I have only one umbrella left at home – a medium size semi automatic with a hooked handle. Right outside my building, fidgeting to get it open, I see Judy R. walk by, pushing one child in a stroller and her eldest lagging a few feet behind. He is proudly holding up a colorful brolly of his very own.

The rain is really pouring down, making me grateful for the three scaffolds along the way: 115 Bennett, 110 Bennett, and finally the one right outside the train station. I stop underneath the last one to undo my umbrella and Emily T. is there, talking on her cell phone. “I love you,” she says, and heads inside.

On the platform I see Emily again, as well as David M. who passes me and wishes me a good morning. Next to me on the bench is an Orthodox Jewish woman with a light blue bandana covering her hair. She is eating what looks like Kix and milk, out of a plastic cup. The train doesn’t come for a long time, and the platform starts to crowd. An announcement about the next train being out of service turns out to be incorrect, however, and I board alongside a cute girl who’s name I don’t know but that’s been written about in my blog before.

At 175th, an elderly woman with dyed hair and thick glasses get on the train. She stands next to me and, being the quintessential “grumpy old woman”, starts muttering and cursing when the train doesn’t immediately move. The conductor announces for someone at the font to stop holding the doors open, and the woman increases her rants. Although comic and somewhat enjoyable, I put my headphones on to ignore. That is when she smiles at me, the sweetest old-woman smile possible. In an instant she has become the angelic grandmother, and I am sad to see her get off just one stop later.

A scruffy middle aged man takes her spot next to me. He is well dressed, business casual, but his eyes are terribly bloodshot and his breath wreaks so powerfully of alcohol that one might imagine he’s come straight from the bar without ever stopping at home last night. He is reading Metro NY while strangely licking his lips, and once or twice he coughs violently enough that I think he might throw up on me. I turn up the volume on my music and push my body into the wall behind me – as far away from the drunkard as it can go.