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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
With sincere apologies to rats everywhere...
The #5 train grinds to a halt. Immediately, everyone on the train sighs, curses, and makes graphic gestures of rage. The garbled voice on the loudspeaker cheerfully informs us that there is a sick passenger on the #5 train ahead of us and this provokes one guy not too far away from me to yell out, “####!”
Extraordinary, huh? This man doesn’t have one single ounce of sympathy for another human being that is sick. All that matters to this misguided miscreant is that he is being inconvenienced. You know, it’s not like he’s on his way to have some fun or anything...this boor is going to work, dammit. That sick stranger is only interrupting his trip to work. What the hell is he so pissed about?
Obviously, the sick passenger has been cleared because the #5 is now moving again on its morose journey towards 86th St.. So, as the human being known only to me as “the sick passenger” begins a frightening navigation of our pathetic and dangerous health care system, this is the point where many the passengers in my train put away their tabloid newspapers and romance novels and blaring iPod devices and begin glancing at their watches in preparation of the move for the door.
Since very few of my co-commuters ever plan ahead, they are invariably in the position of worrying about being late. Their frenzied expressions as that clock clicks past 9:00 A.M. are enchanting to me, I must say. Goddess forbid these people are late for work. They are so programmed to be on time and to be reliable that the very prospect of tardiness chips away their self-confidence. Still, none of them think to simply get up a little earlier to avoid this sad situation. Ironically, none of them seem to mind being late for a movie or a ball game or a political meeting (as if). No, it’s work that controls them, the poor devils.
It’s truly irksome to watch these people--unaware of how much they have in common--as they battle each other like mortal enemies in the futile effort to get out of the train first. They delude themselves each morning that if they get our first, they’ll make it to the office before anyone else and avoid any risk of being singled out by the powers-that-be (or powers-that-shouldn’t-be, as Amy Goodman so aptly puts its).
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