Don't take the A train

…take the C train instead; it’s much more interesting.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the NY subway system (a thing of great beauty, I might add), it’s important to know that, on most of the main traffic arteries in Manhattan, there are 2 overlapping train lines: a local and an express. As you might imagine, the local trains stop at all the stops, and the express trains only hit the major ones. In the case of my daily commute, I have a choice between the A (express) and the C (local). Motivated by the very understandable desire to cut back on commuting time, I usually take the A.

Or I did, until a few days ago, when, due to circumstances that are now irrelevant, I found myself in an uptown C train. There I was, innocently reading my book, when I looked up and witnessed a most extraordinary sight: without any clear reason, the woman sitting across from me (who, I might add, looked very sane and not at all suspicious by outward appearances) got up from her seat, thrust herself at one of the poles in the middle of the car, and started pole dancing with dangerous exuberance. So dangerous, in fact, that she wound up kicking a guy in the head, and nearly causing a full out fight. Needless to say, I was mesmerized. Who knew that such quality entertainment could be found merely by altering one’s commute?

Since I don’t exactly have a pressing need to hurry home after work, and since the C is considerably less crowded than the A, I decided to see what would happen if I took the C again. This time, I decided to throw in another variable by taking my Teach Yourself Hindi book along with me to pass the time. I wasn’t disappointed. Not 2 stops into my morning commute, a young Indian man got on, surveyed the relatively empty car, and decided that the logical thing to do was to sit uncomfortably close to me. He proceeded to badger me – in Hindi – for my number throughout the rest of the commute. Needless to say, my stop couldn’t come fast enough (and equally needless to say, he remains number-less).

I repeated the experiment on the commute home, and garnered attention of a far more pleasant kind. Upon seeing my Hindi book, a lovely older man from Kerala and an African-American MTA employee (both of whom were squashed up against me for completely legitimate space constraint reasons) engaged me in a fascinating discussion about linguistic and ethnic diversity in NYC. It was the first real conversation I’ve had on a train, and it renewed my faith that the inhabitants of this city, particularly those who commute at rush hour, are indeed human beings, and not manner-less boors. And then, as if I hadn’t had enough subway excitement for the day, my anthropological discussion partners were quickly replaced by a very distressed young German man, who had both accidentally been separated from his girlfriend and gotten on an uptown instead of a downtown train.

Truly, I tell you, there is never any shortage of adventure in New York.