To someone who has never even ridden the Cat Cab, public transportation in New York City can be a little frightening. Who am I kidding, after Athens, walking on a crowded street in Columbus can be frightening.
Needless to say that fear prompted me to head down to the subway for my first trip armed with detailed directions and $60 in case I got lost and needed a cab to escape from all the fierce gang members everyone told me New York had.
My first subway trip was easy (no gang members or getting lost) and I walked into my apartment later that day overwhelmed by confidence in my subway skills. That confidence was a big mistake. On the first day of my internship I got a real subway experience.
I climbed onto the subway that morning at 9 a.m. to discover that I was in the middle of a subway rush hour that I hadn't known existed. Over the next 20 minutes so many people got on the subway that my body was shoved against one of the metal poles you grab onto for balance.
When we finally reached my stop, I climbed off with a railing indentation so deep in my skin that I wasn't sure it would ever go away. I needed to switch trains so I ignored my pain and boarded what I thought was an R train. It turned out that it was a Q, and I officially became lost at a subway station.
Defeated, confused and still sporting a railing imprint, I made my way to the subway clerk and asked her for directions. People stared at me and I learned my first lesson: Good New Yorkers don't ask for directions. Good New Yorkers get on the right subway every time and they avoid being the unlucky person to get pressed into the subway railings.
My second subway lesson was that random musical groups like to burst into spontaneous song in your train car. Just today two men broke into a Spanish song while their third friend took off his cowboy hat and walked up and down the train accepting donations. I smiled and enjoyed it outwardly until I realized no one else on the train paid any attention to them. Lesson two: traveling musicians doesn't amuse Good New Yorkers.
The homeless are also frequent subway travelers. In the same journey that I encountered the Spanish singing group, I met an urban outdoorsman (as my father calls them) who, from the second he got on the train to the second he got off of it (holding the doors open until an angry woman yelled at him to let them go so that we could get going) mumbled incomprehensible words that sounded something like this: Change
any change too little too much
just a little change
to close to far
can I get some
just a little
much
fast
close. Change
change
