Saturday, December 03, 2005

“We’ll all join her soon”

WARNING
Storytelling Saturday gets a little graphic today.

Once upon a time…

I was about to board a downtown #6 train at 86th Street the other day when a garbled voice on the loudspeaker cheerfully informed us that there would be a delay. Immediately, everyone on the train and platform sighed, cursed, or made graphic gestures of rage.

(I fell into the “sighing” category.)

Then, the garbled voice on the loudspeaker cheerfully informed us that there was an “injured passenger” at the next station and all service had been stopped. This provoked one commuter to yell out, “Fuck!”

This man did not have a single ounce of sympathy for a fellow human being who’d been injured. In this mixed-up, screwed-up, fucked-up society, all that mattered to this poor misguided soul (and, to be honest, the rest of us) was that he was/we were being inconvenienced. It’s not likely he was on his way to have some fun or anything of the sort…he was almost definitely going to work. That injured stranger was merely interrupting our trip to yet another day at our unfulfilling, spirit-sapping jobs.

I eventually gave up on the subway...tried the bus and then walking before completely missing my next appointment due to gridlock (of both the human and internal combustion engine variety). Public transportation had become a fiasco all over the East Side because, as I learned, the phrase “injured passenger” was putting it lightly. Someone had been hit and killed by a train at the 77th Street station. Hmmm...what was feeling like a mighty annoying day for yours truly, relatively speaking, could have been much worse.

This sad episode reminded me of a similar subway scenario. I was riding the N train home when we were told there would be a delay at the 30th Avenue station. That’s my stop anyway, so I got up to to deboard (no, not the Society of the Spectacle Guy…although he would have appreciated this) along with a train full of grumbling commuters. As I strolled down the steps, I realized the cause of the delay was due to an old woman falling in front of the train. Since the subway is elevated in Astoria, she had fallen from the el to the street below. And, lo and behold, her body was still lying there in the street...under a blanket. Being a well-programmed American spectator, I joined everyone else in walking past the scene for a closer look.

We got more than we expected. As soon as we got to within about ten feet of the body, the police photographer asks for the blanket to be removed. Bingo. This old lady’s head was literally cracked open. Big chunks of her brain were lying next to her and bits and pieces of her skull—complete with bloody clumps of hair attached—were everywhere. Let me tell you, some people freaked out. Big time.

I found myself lost in a series of maddening thoughts: That poor dead old lady was once a beautiful, innocent child. Her mother probably nurtured her and tried to teach her right from wrong...never once imagining her little girl was destined to grow old and one day be smashed by a goddamned subway train.

What about her first boyfriend? Dig this: some guy, about fifty years ago, kissed that woman and ran his fingers through her hair. How could he ever know the day would come that the same hair he was caressing would be thick with blood, jutting in clumps from a portion of her skull on 30th Avenue in front of a group of uncaring voyeurs?

We live each day, rarely pondering the enormous range of possible deaths we can succumb to. This woman was dead, her battered body on display in front nosy, indifferent strangers...and just a few minutes earlier she might have been really conflicted over whether she should watch Letterman or Leno that evening.

The guy standing next to me calmly said: “Well, we’ll all join her soon.” I nodded sadly at that…and moved on.

Who else has a tale to tell?

+++

Happy Birthday, Joseph Conrad (born 148 years ago today)

Conrad sez:
"You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends."

Posted on 12/03 at 07:42 AM
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