The Faces of Metro

The staple Metro face is a depressed face.  No hint of a smile.  Eyes are focused on the floor.  No one ever looks directly at anyone else.  Well, no one wants to get caught doing it, anyway (more on that later).  One group of people who have not yet developed a Metro face is children.  Give them time.  Infants, on the other hand, usually have a good Metro face.

Metro police officers are exceptionally good at the Metro face.  They have to be because they don’t want you to know that they observe everything about you.  Metro employees have the best Metro face.  They can look directly at you and you can’t tell what hand they are holding.

Then there’s the Tourist face.  Eyes are wide open in amazement, or squinting to decipher the Metro train map.  They don’t bother to try to blend in, because they know they can’t. 

Every once in a while, you’ll catch someone staring at you.  No one means to do it, but everyone does it.  What a person does once caught is what separates the creeps from the normals.  The normals will quickly glance away, and that’s it.  When you look back at them, they’re looking somewhere else.  The creeps are a different breed.  They either keep staring at you, or when you look them off and look back, they’re staring at you again.  I find both to be extremely creepy.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget the “what you lookin’ at” face.  Yeah, You.  What?  What?

What?

There is the Clueless face.  This poor sucker doesn’t know where he/she was, is now, or is going.  Even if they get precise, accurate, written directions, they still look completely lost.

Some of the same faces are on Metro buses, especially the Tourist face.  Many Metro bus riders appreciate having scenery to look at, and take full advantage.  I love the “I’m so glad I made it on this bus” face.  That, my friends, is one of the biggest grins you’ll ever see!

The newest face – and the one with the most dire implications – is the Android face.  This face angles downward, expressionless, at 45 degrees and is sometimes bathed in a soft blue glow while the eyes are intensely focused on an e-mail or a game or pornography (or so I’ve heard).  Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before someone meanders directly into the path of a large moving object because they are so engrossed in their own little world.  Thanks to the Android face, pickpockets are having a ball fleecing untold numbers of blue-light zombies every day.

Finally, there is the Pretending to Be Asleep face.  Only a few commuters are brave enough to actually risk catching a few winks on a Metro train or bus.  The vast majority of Metro “sleepers” are just trying to relax or to escape their particular reality for a few hard-earned minutes.  If you commute, think about it – when is the last time you missed your stop because you had dozed off?

As for me, my Metro face is a combination of what-you-lookin’-at and thousand-yard stare, with a lot of freestyle head-bobbing mixed in for good measure.  I do not yet own a Droid.  If you stare at me, I’ll stare back until we arrive at my station or yours.  I have never, ever lost a staredown – except once with Mike Tyson, but he wasn’t really staring at me.  I walked by him in Atlantic City the night before he fought Larry Holmes; I have never seen a stare like that in my life or ever since.  Mr. Tyson would have no problem riding the Metro, and I would feel sorry for any creep who stared at him.

I don’t know where that came from, but now seems like a pretty good time to end this piece….

[Author's note:  On May 1, 2011 I became a smartphone user.  I have a T-Mobile myTouch 4G Android smartphone.  I love it!]

But I Digress

I saw a cool piece of artwork at the doctor’s office last week:  The first part was a translucent blue bowl filled with different colored strips of paper.  The second part was a potholder filled with beans and a pen.  An inscription on the bowl read “What are you holding on to?  Write it down, crumple up the paper, bury it in the beans, and let it go.”  I wrote DOUBT on a piece of paper and buried it.  If it were only that easy….

This trial-and-error writing is getting interesting.   My writing style is starting to evolve; I am even writing about my writing.  To date I have developed three unbreakable rules:

1.  I only write when I feel like it.

2.  I do not write if I am in a bad mood.

3.  I do not write anything that I would not send to my mom for her to read.

I may one day reach the point where rule number 3 will have to be broken – but today is not the day.

I have one piece (on politics) that I have been working on for over a month.  The edits and additions are coming in fits and starts.  I had a lovely creative burst the other morning that really shaped the piece up.  I can’t wait to publish it – but I won’t until I feel that it is complete.  And I have the feeling that that day is months away.

I’ve noticed that I am typing faster than ever, and without a whole lot of typos.  Perhaps I can re-enter the work force as a word processor.  I was in fact a word processor in a previous life.  That gig wasn’t bad at all – good pay and interesting stuff to read.  And, of course, I was good at it.  I was weaned on WordPerfect 5.1; I taught myself the app all the way down to the API (Application Programming Interface) calls.  That was right around the time I switched careers -- first to administration, then to IT.  While I was in IT the company I worked for upgraded from WordPerfect 5.1 to WordPerfect 6.1, then to WordPerfect 9, then to Microsoft Word, which is pretty much the new standard.  As an IT manager, I made it a point to not be the office Word expert, as I already wore too many hats.  I could get up to speed on Word in less than a month if I wanted to… but I digress.

Or do I?  What was I writing about to begin with?  Oh yeah – removal of all doubt.  I need to confirm what I want to do in life going forward, and get on with it.  Is it writing, cooking, both, Management Dave, Tech Dave, or something else entirely?

I think that the correct answer is:  all of the above.

Don't Grow Up Too Fast! Owen's Jacket and Xavier High School

Owen’s Jacket and Xavier High School

Owen, my older and only brother, has four years on me.  Right around the time he left the house, he purchased a new jacket – probably the black leather --  and said he no longer needed or wanted his old jacket.  The old one was a wool-lined brown leather aviator jacket.  Of course he looked great in it, and while he wore it to death, it was still quite wearable and very fashionable when he was done with it.

I asked Mom if it would be OK if I wore this hand-me-down; she said no, because I wasn’t old enough to wear a jacket like that (I was about 13).  I was disappointed, but knew that I could not argue the logic.

About a year earlier, I spent the summer between seventh and eighth grade commuting from Jamaica, Queens to Xavier High School, a Jesuit all-male college preparatory school on 16^th Street in Manhattan.  It was just something to keep me busy all summer, and I loved every bit of commuting both ways on my own and studying and learning during the summer months (yes, I loved it!).  I especially loved all the sports we played:  track and field, whiffleball in the courtyard, and most especially organized basketball.  This is when and where I actually started to understand the game.  Of course, I enjoyed running up and down the court.  The rest, like developing offensive skills and a taste for rebounding and defense, would come later.

As the summer session ended, I was offered the opportunity to skip a grade and enter Xavier as a freshman that fall.  I was really excited and couldn’t wait to tell Mom.  I loved the school, loved the thought of getting a great education there, and figured Mom would like the idea of skipping a year’s tuition.

Guess what?  Mom thought that I should finish out my career at St. Catherine’s by attending eighth grade.  Again, I was a bit flustered, but I trusted my Mom’s judgment.

That winter, Mr. Piemonte, my 8^th-grade homeroom teacher, gave me a brochure about Regis High School, a tuition-free, all-male, Jesuit college preparatory school located on East 84^th Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side .The brochure said something about an entrance examination; I took the exam and did some interviews at the school a few weeks after, and was accepted as a freshman for the Class of 1979.  Regis is one of the well-known, highly-regarded Jesuit all-male college prep schools in New York City.  Two others are Xavier and Fordham Prep; there are a few more, but I digress.  Regis was/is the only one that offers a tuition-free education to every single student.  In my graduation year, all 104 graduates were accepted to college and about 40 percent were accepted to Ivy League schools.  I was accepted at Yale, the only school I applied to.

Was Mom right?  You betcha!  Things could not have worked out better.  Oh yeah, and as for the jacket – by the time I could wear it, I didn’t like it any more.  I had purchased another coat for $20 – a faux shearling from the Burlington Coat Factory – that my mom and I both loved to death!  And I can remember Mom occasionally wearing Owen’s old jacket around the house on winter evenings when we had to keep the thermostat at 68 degrees per President Ford.

Lesson learned:  Don’t grow up too fast.  What’s the rush?

[Author's note:  Next time I come into some money, I am going to write Regis a big check.]

Writing Burst

At 8:04AM I got a surprise call from the dialysis center.  There was a slot available on the first shift if I wanted it.  It just so happened that I was awake and alert and feeling pretty damn good.  I was a little overdue for my workout and was pondering reasons to weasel out of it for another day when the phone rang.  Blessed, sweet dialysis...who would have thought the day would come when I would actually be happy to not only go in for a session, but go in early?  What the fleck is going on?  [Note:  I am writing so furiously right now that my hand is starting to cramp.  I will keep going until my hand -- oops, it just told me to stop]

So -- for once I’ll get out of the “the chair” by 2:15 PM.  Normally I don’t even get to the dialysis center until about 3PM.  The question beckons:  what do I do with the rest of the day?  The first idea that came to mind was to check out the cherry blossoms down by the Mall.  Second thought was to just buy a big burrito (?) and go straight home.  Third thought was to just go straight home and count my blessings.  Latest thought:  Stop at the fishmarket and load up on some snapper, and stop to admire the cherry blossoms at the Southwest Waterfront marina (Haines Point) to the Metro.

There is something different about this morning.  I’m thinking clearly as I usually do nowadays.  I do not mind the thought of dialysis.  The music I’m listening to (my usual hip-hop/R&B/classical mix) sounds exceptionally good.  My hurried mid-dialysis breakfast (a BIG no-no!...Yeah, right) of two White Castle sliders tasted delicious!  (My wife brought home waffles last night, so today’s breakfast was supposed to be waffles, scrambled eggs and turkey sausage, and I was seriously looking forward to it.)  For some reason or for no reason, so far today everything is breaking my way!

Word to the wise:  I may not say much, but I notice EVERYTHING.  Oops, the new girl I was looking at walked off while I was writing this down.  Damn it, where did she go?

OK, here’s the plan:  1) Stop at the fishmarket and load up on snapper, calamari and two ears of corn; 2) take the long way back to Metro so I can admire the cherry blossoms; and 3) go home.  Fresh calamari and turkey sausage for lunch; snapper, corn, onion rings and apple rings for dinner.  Maybe a handful of cookies for dessert.

Sure, my life can get better, but today I am not complaining.  Things could be much, much worse.  I am blessed.

Stomach is starting to yap.  I’ll never make it home without eating something.  Next stop:  Wendy’s for a $1.59 chicken sandwich.  Then on to the Metro...

Changed my mind.  If I’m going to get one $1.59 chicken sandwich, may as well get two.  If I’m going to spend that much, I may as well go to Subway and get a $5.00 footlong.  Black Forest Ham with provolone, lettuce, red onion, green peppers, banana peppers, and honey mustard on Italian.

Long story short -- I changed my mind a couple more times but was safely home before 4PM.  So far I have eaten half of the footlong, some Cheetos (yes, I cheated again!!!!!) and a plate of waffles.  And those six duplex cremes keep staring at me.  My diet is NOT a sham, I swear!

So what’s for dinner?