In the Subway
1. Late at night, smelled cigarette smoke. Saw that a guy to my left was openly indulging.
Began giving him dirty looks; looks that condemned him for forcing me to breathe his poison. Long minutes later,as we were about to pull out of Columbus Circle, I noticed he had in his hand a loooooong, pointy metal thing with a handle. Kinda ice picky-looking, maybe; kinda deadly-looking, for sure. The doors were about to close but I managed to get off the train.
Ratted the guy out to some train worker but as the train had pulled out and she didn't know which one it had been, the worker was at a loss as to how to inform the appropriate authorities that a guy with a deadly weapon was in the system.
Remember, if you see something, say something. (Might not help in terms of security but it'll help kill time for both you and our highly-trained transit workers.)
2. Daytime. On the Manhattan-bound D, there was an Orthodox Jewish kid with wiiiiiiide-brimmed black hat that made him look like a schoolkid on "Little House on the Prairie". (He wasn't wearing "peyos", the side curls often favored by Hebraic devout, so he really could be an Ingalls classmate.) I wanted to ask the kid what it was like not being able to wear buttons and if he liked riding in horse-drawn carriages, so he'd thing I'd mistaken him for Amish.
He was such a wholesome-looking, freckle-cheeked, potentially normal boy. I believe he should be made fun of early and often.
Until he stops that.
What could possibly be religious about wearing long, black coats and slightly-off man-hats? More to the point, what could these garments have to do with a religion from the middle east?
And what does a bunch of guys who "believe" the same thing, wearing the same outfits to reflect that shared "belief, have in common with a gang of '50s high school students with greased back hair and satin jackets bearing the name, "The Conquistadors"?
Everything.
They're all in costumes. Gang uniforms. A method of group identification.
The enemy of subtlety. Of individuality.
Ask me tomorrow and I may feel differently. But today I think that kid should wear "regular" clothes and be exposed to everything and go to shul on Yom Kippur and identify with our people as an individual, not a member of a hive.
Just like me and all the rest of us.
3. Daytime. Idiot on an elevated platform thinks he's underground; tosses minor trash toward the tracks without realizing or perhaps even caring that it will continue past the tracks toward the people in the street below.
4. Early morning. Two guys, one very large, seem nice enough but are very loud. Still, they're laughing and, as I said, they seem nice enough.
They're looking at pictures on someone else's phone. A friend's, perhaps? They mock him.
Hey -- now, they're playing recordings on the phone at a disturbingly high volume, fast forwarding/rewinding them audibly. It's really annoying and they're still laughing and talking really loud.
Without warning, they explode. Something they saw or heard on the phone has ignited them. The large guy hurls the phone to the floor of the train where it smashes, on impact, into several unusable pieces. Apparently, they had seen a picture of the phone's owner, naked, on the phone.
Some nerve this guy had putting a naked picture of himself on the phone. The loud boys naturally shifted to the higher level of ridicule mandated by this offense. I now had the feeling they had stolen the phone. But the photographic evidence of the owner's deeply-felt personal pride pretty much meant they had to destroy the device rather than realize any value from it.
I mean, a man lives by a certain code of behavior, doesn't he?
The guys leave the train.
The pieces of phone continue to ride.
__________________________________
30 January, 2007 @ 20:07:30 GMT
http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer
Began giving him dirty looks; looks that condemned him for forcing me to breathe his poison. Long minutes later,as we were about to pull out of Columbus Circle, I noticed he had in his hand a loooooong, pointy metal thing with a handle. Kinda ice picky-looking, maybe; kinda deadly-looking, for sure. The doors were about to close but I managed to get off the train.
Ratted the guy out to some train worker but as the train had pulled out and she didn't know which one it had been, the worker was at a loss as to how to inform the appropriate authorities that a guy with a deadly weapon was in the system.
Remember, if you see something, say something. (Might not help in terms of security but it'll help kill time for both you and our highly-trained transit workers.)
2. Daytime. On the Manhattan-bound D, there was an Orthodox Jewish kid with wiiiiiiide-brimmed black hat that made him look like a schoolkid on "Little House on the Prairie". (He wasn't wearing "peyos", the side curls often favored by Hebraic devout, so he really could be an Ingalls classmate.) I wanted to ask the kid what it was like not being able to wear buttons and if he liked riding in horse-drawn carriages, so he'd thing I'd mistaken him for Amish.
He was such a wholesome-looking, freckle-cheeked, potentially normal boy. I believe he should be made fun of early and often.
Until he stops that.
What could possibly be religious about wearing long, black coats and slightly-off man-hats? More to the point, what could these garments have to do with a religion from the middle east?
And what does a bunch of guys who "believe" the same thing, wearing the same outfits to reflect that shared "belief, have in common with a gang of '50s high school students with greased back hair and satin jackets bearing the name, "The Conquistadors"?
Everything.
They're all in costumes. Gang uniforms. A method of group identification.
The enemy of subtlety. Of individuality.
Ask me tomorrow and I may feel differently. But today I think that kid should wear "regular" clothes and be exposed to everything and go to shul on Yom Kippur and identify with our people as an individual, not a member of a hive.
Just like me and all the rest of us.
3. Daytime. Idiot on an elevated platform thinks he's underground; tosses minor trash toward the tracks without realizing or perhaps even caring that it will continue past the tracks toward the people in the street below.
4. Early morning. Two guys, one very large, seem nice enough but are very loud. Still, they're laughing and, as I said, they seem nice enough.
They're looking at pictures on someone else's phone. A friend's, perhaps? They mock him.
Hey -- now, they're playing recordings on the phone at a disturbingly high volume, fast forwarding/rewinding them audibly. It's really annoying and they're still laughing and talking really loud.
Without warning, they explode. Something they saw or heard on the phone has ignited them. The large guy hurls the phone to the floor of the train where it smashes, on impact, into several unusable pieces. Apparently, they had seen a picture of the phone's owner, naked, on the phone.
Some nerve this guy had putting a naked picture of himself on the phone. The loud boys naturally shifted to the higher level of ridicule mandated by this offense. I now had the feeling they had stolen the phone. But the photographic evidence of the owner's deeply-felt personal pride pretty much meant they had to destroy the device rather than realize any value from it.
I mean, a man lives by a certain code of behavior, doesn't he?
The guys leave the train.
The pieces of phone continue to ride.
__________________________________
30 January, 2007 @ 20:07:30 GMT
http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/andrewjlederer
posted by Andrew J. Lederer at 3:37 PM
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