A little boy, Japanese, barely bigger than his backpack, clad in a mish-mash of colorful prints I’m sure he picked out himself, accompanying his dad, weighed down himself in front by a platter of takeout from the sushi place. As the train bends and sways, the boy tips back, dad tips forward.
* * *
The new turnstiles on the T, with the clever electronic innards, mean nothing– at least to the fare-jumper whose arms are long enough to allow him to lift his pack, up and over, and wave it in front of the exit motion sensor. The doors part, the alarm sounds. By the time any help arrives, the fare-jumper has sauntered into the throng.
* * *
The clown? The storyteller? in a yellow T-shirt, red plaid pants, All-Stars and a bowler– telling the tale of Androcles and the Lion to a group of disinterested travelers, waylaid at Downtown Crossing. He takes advantage of my passing to cringe, mouselike, in my lion-like presence.
* * *
The college-aged girl, heedless of others, as she sobs into her phone, describing some lover’s spat to the friend on the other end of the line– she may be unconscious of surrendering her privacy, or of simply not caring that others must hear, but I’m embarrassed for her and for us that our sense of privacy and public dignity is so eroded, by whatever means, that the rest must sit by, unwilling party to her halting, crying “whys?”
* * *
A group of high school kids, ending their after-school-programmed day, still wound up. Yelling, singing, dancing, laughing at the top of their lungs– with looks they think are sly toward adults sitting near, ignoring them. They’re hoping we’ll be shocked. Instead, we’re amused, or merely bored, since we remember our own callow youths.
* * *
Everybody’s reading, chatting, plugged in. No one just looks, just watches the trees pass or the lights dip and flash as pre-summer dusk sets in. It’s late, they’re tired, and focused on home, soon, not here, now.