As you may know, I take the commuter rail to and from work every day. All told, I spend about 3.75 hours commuting every day. I expected this to be awful, but it's really not so bad. I can read, and knit, and listen to music on the train, and the 20 minutes of walking in the morning and after work are probably good for me. I'm trying to stave off that mid-20s heart attack I so richly deserve. BUT! Some days the commute tries to kill me. Examples:
The train doesn't come.
The train and the train before it don't come, and the platform fills with disgruntled, chatty people.
The woman next to me needs a breath mint and she's breathing through her mouth while she sleeps.
The man next to me has B.O.
The person next to me is dating the person across the aisle, and they talk the whole way.
The people behind me just met, but are both small talk aficionados, and they talk the whole way.
These things happen. But yesterday was really terrible. It was in the high 90s, and quite humid. I walked 20 minutes through the city, dodging the sun and my sweaty sidewalk companions. I was really looking forward to the icy cold train ride (I bring a jacket every day, otherwise I'd shiver). But the first car I hopped on wasn't air conditioned. Odd! I walked through to the next, which was also un-air-conditioned. How peculiar! And the third? Hot as hell. Finally, the last car was not too hot. It clearly had a fan or something going. It was an old car, of a style I hadn't seen before. The other cars had been empty, and this one was completely packed. I found a seat - one of those where you face another person, and right up against the window on the sunny side of the train. Still, better than those other cars, which might have qualified as ovens.
Only, here's the thing: there was a bathroom on my train car. And the AC stopped as soon as we left the station. I sweated the whole way home, as did all the smelly people around me. And the smells from the bathroom would waft down the aisle whenever we stopped, or someone opened the bathroom door.
There was one guy who got off after a couple of stops. He'd sweated through his t-shirt, and when he got up he left a moisture mark on the bottom of his seat. Bum sweat.
But after all this - the ripe smell of sweat, the stifling air, the air like that in a port-a-potty, people wiping their sweaty faces on tissues and the backs of their hand, the best part was the man next to me, who stayed in his three-piece suit the whole ride.
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