What a World
April 24, 2008
You should know, along with not being fair, life is bizarre as well.
First point of business, my water was out when I woke up this morning. Thanks be to brita and it's lovely ability to hold enough water to make my coffee in the a.m., no one lost their lives. Called landlord. Landlord was frazzled but friendly. Water main out. Down the street. Whole block without water. End scene.
Then it came back on and we raced (and by raced I mean I called dibs on the bathroom because I was the first one awake this morning and I'm the girl and all this means "back off punks") to use the, um, potty.
The boy and I decided to head into town for lunch together. On the way in, we heard a little yelling going on in the subway car. This is pretty normal so we completely ignored it...until I looked up and a bunch of people were kind of giggling and looking oddly worried, etc.
First thing to point out, it's ALWAYS interesting when strangers on the train share a moment together, chat about it, laugh about it and so on. If you are unfamiliar with the NYC subway and its goings on, for the most part, us every-day users mind our own business and act as if we're not elbowing each other, racing each other for seats and stepping on each other's toes. So when there are moments like this, where we're making eye contact and conversing, they really stand out. However, the situation soon became rather uncomfortable.
The guy across the aisle from us starting saying "I might have to get off before the bridge, this guy is freakin' me out!" That's when it occurred to me that the man being loud was not only having an extremely animated shouting match, he was having it with himself...in Arabic.
I can not tell a lie, I searched for a bag, backpack or anything under his shirt that may have looked suspicious. This is hard for me to admit because looking back on it, if he wasn't shouting in Arabic, I would have, hell, we all would have just chalked it up as another crazy person on the train. Instead we all laughed nervously together and the guy across the way kept talking about the bridge coming up and maybe we should all get off. Then the yelling man started to go into his pockets. Everyone went quiet.
He pulled out his pen and wallet and started writing stuff down.
Man across the way: "Oh shit! He's takin' names!"
Everyone laughs. Out of pure nervousness mind you...well and the ridiculousness of the situation.
The yelling man got off before the bridge and the guy who was worried about it sighed with relief and made a few more small comments on the matter, then we all went back to what we usually do, ignore eachother. That's it. No friendships made. No more conversation. Just left with our bizarre NYC fear and to sit on what we had just witnessed and felt.
Lunch was lovely. I balanced a salt shaker (see photo) and came home.
The water was out again.