Friday after work, and I’m enjoying a little life, liberty and pursuit of happiness on the 6:33. Guy next to me is young (28?) and nondescript. The second the train exits the tunnel, the guy whips out his cell phone.
He dials.
“What’s going on…”
“I’m on the train. I’m bored…”
“Forgot my book…” [Editor’s note: Yeah, right.]
“KFC? Cool.”
I tried to tune him out.
“It barely snowed here. Remember when we were kids, wasn’t there like mountains of snow? Remember when we’d play King of the Hill and it was, like, 10 feet high?”
The train progresses through the Bronx. I squeeze my Sam Adams a little harder.
“Did you download Lost yet?”
“I haven’t seen any movies…”
I turned the iPod up a little louder.
“I have Babel. It’s like Crash, seven storylines going at once…”
I switched the iPod from Violent Femmes to System of a Down, acoustic punk for angry Armenian metal. No luck.
“I hate it when they try to push their political agenda…”
“Yeah. Cool. Cool. Cool.”
And on. And on. And on.
At least he was kind enough to get off inWhite Plains.