Living in New York City allows us access to THE best people watching. We all know how goofy we can get and that is why seeing other people act outrageously can be good for the soul. It reminds us that we are all human, each with our own imperfections.
Our experiences people watching have nothing to do with feeling superior or better than anyone, wait yes it does. It makes me feel like I have A LOT going for me. It makes me feel like the most normal and sane person in the world. I feel like a million bucks.
#1 The schizophrenic/turrets guy:
It's Monday, and a holiday, so we are wandering around Chelsea. We are about to cross the street when we see, walking up to the opposite corner (the same corner we are about to cross to), this man. His hair was about shoulder length, frizzy, and full. He is yelling as he walks staggers to the corner, yelling vulgarly at someone that no one else can see. At this point I am realizing we are going to cross paths with him and I start running through escape routs in my head. Thankfully he stopped at the trash can before hitting us and starts yelling again and talking on to, again, no one. We laugh and walk on grateful we didn't have to be any closer than we were.
Thursday night rolls around and we find ourselves walking along the south end of central park to get to the A train. Low and behold walking towards us, mumbling to "himself" is the exact same man. I could not believe it. Chances of running into a friend who lives one neighborhood away is so small, running into a crazy person 2 avenues over and 50 blocks up is unheard of.
Next time I will listen a little closer to see who it is he converses with so emotionally.
#2 Mama bear on the express train:
Riding the A train home from 14th street lends itself to great people watching because its about a 35 minute ride with 11 stops. Today the express train was running on the local tracks for a section adding on 2 -3 more stops. This is hard because they only do this at certain times and people think it is going to stay local all the way to 207th when in fact it stops going local at 59th. Anyway.... we get on the train and immediately noticed two little girls stomping and running around one of the poles in the middle of the car. The girls were cute enough but the loud stomping made me feel for anyone who might have a headache or in the process of getting one. There were passengers on the other side of this production that were obviously irritated that any parent would ever let their young behave in such a way. Pregnant mama bear noticed the train was stopping local and started yelling at the "train" for not telling her sooner it was going local. Every stop she swore and let us all know how she felt and what she wanted to do about it. The already irritated passengers started making comments in Spanish and looking at her. She noticed and started yelling. No one made eye contact with her. We all looked away and tried to look pleasantly engaged elsewhere. That did not stop her foul mouth and racist comments in front of her still present children.
Lesson learned: Never mess with a mother who has children near by, even if you are a train on a schedule listed at each platform.
#3 Make-out couple numero dos:
Remember the first siting? Yeah this one, I felt gross watching. Yeah, that bad. They were in the next car over and we could see them through the door windows. They were teenagers obviously new to the ways of kissing. We figured they were headed home and this was the only time they would be "alone." They attacked each other with snake-like jaws almost becoming unhinged as they tried to eat each others' faces. You might guess they stopped for air when the train stopped, or when turns jostled everyone around, or when people started staring or when people walked past. Nope. They kept right at it until they got off the train. Then they held hands and avoided eye contact as they wiped their faces dry.
No comments:
Post a Comment