the MTA blues

Riding the subway really blows goats. Yeah, yeah, I know it's the smartest way to transport Manhattan's teeming masses, but being a mass on the teem is about as fun as synchronized swimming in the Florida Everglades.

Anyway. My commute is a daily, hour-long, train-hopping fresh torture. I am a small person so the lummoxes and walking Stay-Puft people don't notice their elbows crushing my windpipe, or their Hulk feet pulverizing my dainty feet. People smell bad. People chomp gum, sweat, pick at themselves, expel fluid, emit body sounds freely, share the perfume/cologne/body spray they've been marinating in, and generally behave like they're home alone in their bathroom instead of crammed elbow-to-asshole with 100 other people in an airless metal chamber hurtling through the underground of New York City.

Each day, I read the Post and pretend I'm Judy Jetson, piloting a single-occupant space ship to work and arriving just as fabulous as I was when I exited the apartment building in Brooklyn. This only rarely works, but it's a fun diversion. What really twists my thong, though, are the Sloth People. Gingerly descending or ascending stairways or mega-carefully entering/exiting subway cars, they somehow always manage to block my forward progress, invariably making me late and volcanically irritated. They aren't always heavy, or elderly, or tourists. I'm beginning to believe some of them are DOING IT ON PURPOSE!

Now before you jump to any conclusions, dear reader, I'm not inclined to suspect conspiracies. In fact, I distrust the idea of conspiracies, in general. It's phenomenally hard to get a group of any kind of people to agree to anything long-term. I do believe, however, in coincidences. Laws of averages have to apply to everything, don't you think? In any case, I have witness unrelated people doing, saying, or thinking the precise exact thing and believing themselves unique, on many non-consecutive occasions. Just as I've seen men and women of all shapes, sizes, age, etc., plod along in the subway station like they are 78 records in a radio station that only plays 45 records. SO! There are people in normal physical health who are capable of moving their asses at or near the same speed of others around them, who choose not to, for some diabolical reason. They must be stopped.

Finally, who drives these subway trains? We put an awful lot of trust into them, and I'd feel better knowing they are qualified and well-trained for their job. If this is not the case, for the love of Maude, don't tell me!