An Introduction

I judge people on the metro. I mean I really judge them. My favorite are the middle-aged women who insist upon shoving their way up in front of the door so that they are RIGHT in front of the door when the train stops, because heaven forbid they have to be the SECOND person off the train. I also laugh at 50-year-old men who carry insulated lunch bags; and I can’t help but wonder if they actually picked it out themselves at the Costco, or if they shirk out the door each morning hoping that their loving wife won’t notice that they left the ugly looking thing on the counter on purpose. I can’t stand the guy sitting next to me with his iPod turned up so loudly that I can hear every word of the song that he is mouthing to himself while he taps his toe to the beat. Sure—there is an unspoken rule in public transportation that you’re supposed to stare into space in such a way that no one really notices where your blank gaze is focused. I try to read the paper in the morning to avoid the eye contact, but on the days when the train is too crowded to get a seat, I can’t help but scanning my fellow passengers and chuckling to myself as I start the day.

I also eavesdrop. Sometimes you can’t help it—like frat-tastic boys who talk about last night’s conquests as though no one can hear them; the pretentious the law student boasting to her friends that she has the best outline for her evidence course; the tourist staring at the map on the wall and asking everyone who passes by if we’ve reached their stop yet; or the annoying woman trying to answer her phone over and over again despite the fact that signal has cut out every time we’ve gone into the tunnel between the last three stations. But then there are the conversations you cock your head ever so slightly to be sure you hear them right—like the colleagues who brought their water cooler stories about their boss’s affair on to the train with them; the awkward conversation between squabbling couple; the young congressional staffer talking about what their boss did instead of going to the floor to vote; or one friend helping the other fill in the blanks to the prior night’s black-out-drunken evening. The thing about eavesdropping is that you can do it even while you’re reading the paper—the trick is simply to hold in your laughter/disgust/shock until you exit the train.

And I know I should feel bad about it. But I just don’t. Maybe it’s that I miss the sunlight of driving my own car downtown, rather than burrowing underground in the depths of the public transportation system. Maybe it’s that when I get off the train in the morning, I walk like a lemming down the street, surrounded by others in suits. Maybe it’s that I’m bitter that I’m getting in to work early only to have to wait for two hours before my supervisor gets back to me with my next assignment. Maybe it’s that I’m frustrated at how much longer I’m going to have to be in the office than the bureaucrat sitting next to me with his ID tags hanging around his next on his agency lanyard. Or maybe I don’t feel bad about it because I actually enjoy it. And I know I’m not the only one.