Wabewalker

“I had one more announcement to read, but since it’s Friday I’ll spare you the hassle.”

The BSIE was in a fabulous mood today, and he coughed out four witticisms during the ride:

• “I know you’ve heard these instructions before, but I’m required to read them to you.”
• “You better read the emergency instructions: because if you don’t know what to do, shame on you.”
• “Just a fair warning to our regular commuters: The students are coming! The students are coming! School starts in two weeks.”
• “We are now approaching Grand Station… Trade Technical College on your left, McDonald’s and Burger King on your right.”

I have no idea why he hasn’t been fired, but more power to him.

mood: satisfied

I should just rename this journal Visions of Melancholy from a Slow-Moving Train or something of that sort, because the only bloggable things that happen seem to take place on Metro Rail. I know there are factions out there that say you must blog about your work to improve your career, your social life, your chance of getting a compatible mate, &c., &c.; but my job would bore you to tears. For the non-technocrati, I work for a computer technology company (boring); for the technorati, I work for an online advertising agency that thinks PHP is still hot (über-boring). So no more talk about work.

Today’s trip combined the greatness of the BSIE in the morning (“Sir, please step out of the yellow danger zone”) with this crazy girl named Isadora in the evening. I don’t mean crazy as in tinfoil-hat-mumbling-to-yourself, but crazy as in an ineffable zest for life that makes everyone around her open up and smile. She introduced herself to the entire car, then proceeded to introduce each passenger to the others.

I mean, this kind of bizarre spontaneous social gathering only occurs in sit-coms, but today it happened in real life. The tall man that I see almost every day at the station—his name is David. She read his palm.

In a fit of spontaneous goodwill, I offered to take her to the airport (it wasn’t excessive goodwill; the airport is on my way home). She accepted, and we zipped out of the station, all the windows down in my dusty Toyota and Axel Rose screaming Welcome to the Jungle at full blast on the crappy in-dash stereo.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I am reminded what it was like to be alive.

“Now approaching Seventh and Metro. This is the end of the line. Please take all of your personal belongings with you when you exit the train.

“Any money left on the train I will consider a tip.”

[pause]

“I’m kidding about the money. Please take your money with you.”

The insane engineer gets better and better each day. I could make this a weekly feature.

Excitement abounded on the Metro train today when the engineer decided to go nuts.

Well, “excitement” is probably an overstatement, but things definitely got interesting in the Chinese-Proverbial sense.

The train was running late—very late. Another train was right on its tail, and because of the “snowplow” effect, the first train was rather full. Specifically, the first two cars were full. The last car, in which I was, had many empty seats.

The engineer was rather upset about his tardiness and the general recalcitrance of the passengers. At every stop he would make the announcement, “Please let the passengers off before you board the train. Also, there are other cars than the first two, you do not need to be near the front of the train. Try the other doors, please.”

Around the fifth stop, his tone became very confrontational: “I said, please board using the doors near the end. Do you people understand English? If you don’t understand English, you should go to school. Please get off the train and enroll in the nearest school.”

Nervous glances were shared all around. I was sure that this train ride would end in a high-speed impact or possible derailment at the Washington Street bend, but alas neither happened. He calmed down and we arrived at the end-of-the-line without further incident.

So much potential for an interesting day wasted…