Uptown Small Town

Commutes in cities can be rather ridiculous at times.  When I lived in Atlanta, my commute was about 10 miles and it took 45 mins.  Each way.

When I lived in New York, I’d zip up the puffy North Face jacket and walk to work through well below freezing temperatures just to avoid squeezing into a subway car with other people and their puffy jackets, dripping umbrellas, and scowling faces.  Of course one time I decided to take the subway and was completely smooshed in (and it was one of those that packed-so-tightly-that-no-one-needs-to-actually-hold-on-as-we-zoom-through-the-underground-tunnels-because-we’re-so-close-to-our-”neighbors,”-we-hold-one-another-upright sort of packed) and the guy I was pressed into turned around.

Then he looked down at me.

Then he said: Oh…hi…

I laughed and said hi back to my suited-up colleague from the office.

Now keep in mind that our faces were about three inches apart.  He looked….horrified.  Which made it even funnier to me.  And, how does one make small talk with a work acquaintance while their bodies are unnaturally pressed into one another by the surrounding people and their puffy jackets (because silence is even more awkward)?

Well, for our 10 minute ride into the Time Warner Center he talked all about his wife.  He told me about where she was raised, her job, her likes, dislikes, how they met, etc., etc.  Then we got to our stop, squeezed and ’scuse me’d our way out of the subway and said a brief “see-ya” when we arrived on the 21st floor and went about our days. (Me with heaping doses of new-found factoids about his wife.  I guess it’s nice to know that while uncomfortably pressed up against a female colleague, he speaks at a very constant sort of pace about his wife.)

(My office was in that set of towers… the one on the left.  Image by New Yorkled.)

(Another interesting image of the Time Warner Center by Tony Shi, NY-NJ)

Anyway, back to my point (I’m pretty sure I had one). I say all this to say:  commutes can be just… odd.  My current commute in San Francisco takes me through Chinatown.  And, while it’s definitely not comparable to packing one’s self into the subway in NY, it has it’s packed-into-a-bus-with-pink-market-bags-that-smell-like-fish sort of thing going for it. Which is not really all that enjoyable.

Photo by ifotog

Yesterday I stood from my seat on the bus and let an elderly Asian woman sit down.  And apparently this small act garnered me a temporary membership card into the seemingly tight-knit, tightly packed community of sorts.  When another seat opened up, she tapped me on my leg and tried to scurry me with her hand to the seat before anyone else could take it.  And it was not only her doing this, an older Asian man and another Asian woman were also pointing at the seat, telling me to take it in an excited, hurried, half Chinese/half English language.

And I couldn’t not take the seat at this point because I might lose my membership card.

So I sat.  And after settling my bag on my lap, I looked up and all three of these people, in different locations on the bus, were smiling at me.  Like they’d accomplished helping one of their (temporary) own.  They looked almost proud.

And it made me proud.  (I’m not sure if this is a sign that I’m a good person or that I’ve reached a point of work-exhaustion/delirium. Could be either.)

So while city commutes can be fairly un-fun (puffy jacket/subway), sometimes we’re lucky enough to have little small town moments that make one smile. Well, at least they make me smile. (Even if it is a delirious/exhausted one.)