Story Time

Last week there was a stroller crowding the middle of the train during rush hour. Seated in front of the stroller was a young mother with her little daughter on her lap. The toddler sucked her thumb and wore a fuzzy brown jacket that had earned her the nickname "Bear." The train was loaded with people, but all were silent except the mom, who read aloud to her bear in sing-song tones. I was lulled by the stillness of the train and the smooth rhythm of the story. The book was called "Little Bear," obviously a favorite. I tried not to stare, but as I averted my gaze, I realized that others were struggling with the same thing. Many people had their eyes glued to the page of the book, watching the pictures as the story went by. 

Death Wish

Wednesday was an incredible day. The sun shone warmly through the cold spring, and I decided to wait outside while my laundry tumbled. I lay down on a hilltop park bench to feel the heat on my face, chatting to my mom on the phone, with nowhere to be and nothing to do.

And then I heard screaming in the square below. Repetitive, rhythmic words, like a mantra. I couldn't make them out, so I sat up and went to peer over the side of the hill. A man stood in the middle of the traffic rotary, under the same perfect sun, screeching, crying out, "Run me over! Run me over! Run me over! Run me over!"

My Heart Will Go On

You don't need me to tell you that iPhones are everywhere, but this week, I saw one strapped to a guy's head. At first, it looked like a bluetooth set-up or headphones, but then I realized that he was playing music outright, just above his hairline. I was reading in the station and extremely distracted by his 80's butt rock, so I tried to sit far away from him when the train came. With his dark beard, champion sweatshirt, and low-lying baseball cap, he looked so much like a person who loved 80's butt rock. But in a momentary lull from the train noise, I realized that I'd typecast him too soon, as he bobbed his head to the passionate strains of a Celine-like songstress.

BPD

I saw a policewoman on the street today walking the opposite direction and talking on a cell phone.

"Not me!" she said into the phone, "I can't - I've got my hands full."

She was holding a Starbucks cup in one hand and a cell phone in the other.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

A little girl was lying over two seats when I got on the T today. Her father lifted her up to make room for a huge crowd of people that had just boarded.

"Where is that music coming from?" she asked him.

"Someone's headphones," he answered. "The train doesn't have it's own soundtrack."

"Yes it does," I thought. Just ask Pauline. (Start with 3:15-5:25.)

Keeping up with the Joneses

During the snow this weekend, one of the stores across the street sent a man outside to shovel the huge sidewalk in front of it. The ground he covered made a perfect outline of the width of his store, and he did not color outside the lines. When he was finished, he went back out to sprinkle salt all over it. Ten minutes later, a man from the next store appeared and scraped away his snow. The next time I looked out, I saw a guy emerge from the store on the other side of the first, all bundled up and extremely reluctant, busted red shovel in hand.

The fascinating part of all this is that there was less than one inch of snow on the ground.

Help for the Homeless

There was a guy standing outside Au Bon Pain soliciting customers on their way in.

"Do you have a moment to help the homeless?"

He caught the person right before me, so I was off the hook. I watched him while I sat in the front window of the shop. He stood in a ski jacket under the falling snow, with hat and mittens and clipboard. After a while, he was approached by a rugged man in a cotton army jacket, with a sand-colored bag spilling out over his shoulder. He was unkempt and under-dressed. I watched their confrontational body language at first, but eventually I could hear their conversation through the thick glass wall.

"So you have some money for me, then?" Asked the self-declared homeless man.

"That's not how it works," answered the canvasser.

The homeless man proceeded to ask him exactly how it worked, how a homeless man was to get this "help." But I don't know what he was answered.

I had watched the man pocket cash from all sorts of people, the way a beggar would with a paper cup - but in this case, it had to go through envelopes and bank accounts and many other hands. And he couldn't lose it to an unapproved homeless man. Especially not in its rawest, most delicate form.

Jam Tomorrow, Jam Yesterday

The other day I walked into Starbucks to find a bitter old man accosting each barista, one by one, with variations on the following:

"You wanna jam!? I'll show ya how to jam!"

"You think you know how to jam, huh?"

"Why do you always wanna jam?"

I really don't know what he meant by jam, but this is what I was thinking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-MLwPW86Rs

After they asked him to leave enough times, he showed himself out and proclaimed, "Ya' all so fuckin' stupid!"

Random Acts of Worship, Pt. 2

I was waiting for an outbound green line train on Thursday when I heard a solo Amen chorus from somewhere in the station. The concrete walls muddied the sound so that I had no clue where to find its source. People around me leaned forward and back to peer around columns, but no one knew where to find the singer. When my train pulled up, I crossed the platform and lined up to get on. It seemed that a train had just dropped off another load of red line passengers, because a crowd of people swarmed up from the lower level. I glanced over to where they came from and noticed a tall black man lowering his straight arms from overhead just as the singing stopped.

Random Acts of Worship, Pt. 1

There is an idol in a box along Willow Street in Somerville. It's set in front of the porch of a blue house on an all-residential block. I think it's Jesus, but I'm not sure. It is a little Prince dressed all in white with a cape and crown. He's worn and water-damaged, but there are usually some fresh flowers in front of and around his box. I have seen him many times and thought about taking a picture of him for the blog, but I wasn't sure if he really spoke for himself.

A few days ago, I saw an old man in a blue L.L. Bean jacket standing before the prince with bowed head. It was pretty cold out, but the man braved the wind with his bare hands folded softly across his chest. There are churches all over the neighborhood. I had to wonder why the man chose that place to pause.

Speaking of Drunk Men on the Train

I just saw an old man with bushy eyebrows alternating between shots from plastic bottles of Listerine and Coca-Cola. His bald head was red and surrounded by a flank of flat, white hair. He caught my attention because there was nobody else on the train saying anything (it was 5:18am), and he was conversing with the air at a volume suitable for a crowded pub. At first he just talked about the red sox and how to serve fried clams and other Bostonian topics, but his oeuvre expanded with time. Here are some highlights:

"You want me to do Billy Joel? I'll do Billy Joel for ya... Sing me a soooooong!! the piano man!!"

Then, setting his coke bottle on the floor in the center of the train: "You can have that! I won't have that!"

And on his way out: "I don't know why she loves me... I ain't handsome... I'm not Elvis Presley..."

All the while, a black woman sat in the center of the train car in a bright yellow turtleneck praying the rosary.

40 Ounces to Freedom

Recently I saw an old drunk man on the train sneaking swigs from a 40 of Steel Reserve. His face was all red and his head wobbled with the motion of the train.

"Judgment day is now!" he repeated under his breath. And then later, a little louder: "No more shit. No more. Judgment day is now." He smirked and gazed lazily at the specks on the floor.

The Wisdom of Children

"It's cold," said the mother. "You'd better put on your jacket."
"Mama, if I put my jacket on, how will it make you warmer?"

Touchee, kid.

Empty Cup

A few days ago I witnessed a girl drop her wallet on the sidewalk. Luckily, a panhandler stopped her, saying, "Miss! Miss, you dropped your wallet."
"Oh! Thank you!" she said, looking grateful and flustered as she picked it up.
The man flipped his Au Bon Pain cup to her expectantly.
"Sorry," was all she said as she turned away.
"Oh come on, miss - I was gonna take it anyway!"
An onlooker confirmed this, shouting, "I saw him, he was gonna take it anyway!"
But she never looked back.

Missed Connections and Made Ones

Sometimes there are street musicians who seem to be on another level than the others. There was a man like that in the train station last week, singing with his guitar. Most of the time he just sounded like a really good folk singer, but every once in a while he let out an other-worldly hum in his high range, and I couldn't even believe it was coming from him. It was the sweetest sound I'd ever heard from a man's voice. I stood right near him and clapped when he finished his song. After he thanked me, a man appeared from the other side of the barrier with a hand outstretched. The singer shook it and proceeded to strike up a conversation. They chatted while the station filled with people. I thought it was a shame that he was missing the chance to perform for this huge crowd of people; they would be gone in a moment and never have heard him sing. By the time he picked up his guitar again, the train was approaching, and its noise drowned him out. I watched him on mute from the window of the train, and I saw the last people step off the platform, but the man who shook the singer's hand hadn't come onto the train. He had stayed back to hear the rest of the song. And I suppose he would listen better than a crowd of people anyway.

City Kids, Vol. 2

My boyfriend witnessed a little boy drinking from a water fountain and then being scolded by his mother the other day.

"No no no, we don't drink from those!" she said. "They're dirty!"

Blue Gatorade

Yesterday I saw a little girl drinking a blue Gatorade, and her mouth was all blue. She was drinking it so fast that she gasped after each sip.

Her dad looked down at her as they entered the train, saying, "I can't believe you like that stuff. DIS-gus-ting. I'm a bad father for buying it for you. Now this," he reached down into his plastic bag, "This is yummy goodness." He pulled out a Naked juice.
"What is it?" asked the blue-cheeked kid.
"Carrot juice," he replied.
"Yuck!"

Later I heard more snippets of their chat.

"Why don't you write your next story about a handsome dad who is also a king?" asked the man.
" 'Cause," she explained, "I don't wanna write about that. And I already know what I wanna write about."
"And what's that?"
"John and Luke and those ones."
"Why do you wanna write about them?"
" ' Cause they're the only ones who like Gatorade."

With that, she delightedly slurped down the rest of her drink. I wish I could read her stories.

City Kids

I saw a family leaving the train together yesterday. When we approached their stop, they all stood up, and the mom took out a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer. All four kids put their hands out when they saw it, and she put a dime-sized drop in each one. Then the dad held his hand out, and she gave him some, and she took some, and they all put it on. I heard some of the kids asking for more and watched them fight over the bottle as they left the train.

Headed to Harvard

When the train pulled up in Park Street the other day, the doors opened to release a screaming twenty-something white man in an underwear T-Shirt.

"WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME!?" He screamed and sprinted out the doors. A few other people followed him out, one of which was a Korean man in a starchy white dress shirt and an MBTA badge.

I was relieved that this guy was leaving the car I was boarding. When we pulled into the next station, however, he appeared again just before the doors closed, and sprinted back in. Apparently he was dodging from car to car.

"STOP FOLLOWING ME!" His voice broke when he yelled; he sounded like a singer in a hardcore band. This time nobody entered behind him, and I wondered for a moment if he wasn't just hallucinating and paranoid. People made way as he paced up and down the train, and his voice softened while he pleaded between sobs.

"Please will somebody help me? I'm goin' outta my mind here, people... I got this fuckin' MBTA guy followin' me... Please I... Oh sorry, I see you got kids - I'm not tryin' ta be freaky or somethin', I just need some help! This guy's followin' me like a weirdo. Please, somebody just help me." There was a clear stream running from his nose, and he wiped the moisture around his eyes with a bundled up tote bag.

We all stared at the space in front of our feet while he cried on and on. Nobody said anything. Nobody asked what was wrong with him, what he needed help with. The girl across from me raised her hand to her forehead as if she needed to block the sun from the guy's direction. At one point I heard him mutter something about a drug program, but mostly he just kept asking for help. "There's so many people, I just don't understand why someone won't help me..." I wanted to be that someone. I wanted to help. But I was paralyzed.

When we pulled into the next station, the MBTA agent walked slowly up to our car, and the crying guy ran out, wailing again."I gotta go to Harvard, but I'm leavin' now 'cause you won't stop following me! And I can't afford to get back on! But I'm leavin', okay!?"

The agent strolled wordlessly after him, and we rolled on toward Harvard without them.

Heard While Entering the T

A little girl turned to her mom on her way to the escalator and said, "Mommy, can I walk up the down stairs?" Her mom said no. Moms are no fun. Safety shmafety.