OKs 

 

I’ll give you this–it was crowded yesterday on the F.

Between the flooding and the V not running, there were extra people trying to get to work on fewer vehicles. Truthfully, I’ve never thought the V was much of a workhorse. It’s a local in Queens so most folk from my neighborhood in Jackson Heights don’t take it. Straphangers usually get off the V between Forest Hills and Jackson Heights to switch to the E or F expresses at my stop.

So I was surprised there were so many extra people packing onto the F yesterday. I guess the V is more of a workhorse than I thought.

Coming home, that’s another story. I take the V from 23rd Street if I want to sit, the F if I want to shave seven minutes off my commute and stand in my cone-of-silence breathing in someone’s deodorant.  

 

Yesterday I had no choice. With floods in Queens at 65th Street, it was the F or nothing. Coming home was even more crowded than usual.

 But here’s the thing. We all knew about the rain. We all got wet earlier in the day. We all heard the unintelligible announcement about the V being out of commission. So why, then, when a train is packed, why oh why is it that people crowd around the doors, waiting to get on and don’t let the poor sardines inside get off?  

I understand, when a train isn’t packed and you can see that nobody is getting off, why folks crush forward to enter; I mean, not everybody can get a seat and it’s every man and woman for him/herself.

 

But when we pulled into the 74th Street Roosevelt station yesterday and there was a crowd waiting to get on and a crowd waiting to get off, why couldn’t the outside folks just wait until us insiders all got off? It’s the 74th Street station. You Outsiders know everybody is getting off. Usually over half the train exits at 74th. And there are no seats to get to, and we can’t make room for you on the train, unless you let us off.  But instead, yesterday we had OKs (Outsider Knuckleheads) trying to enter as we were trying to exit.

 

It was like being birthed, again, only this time I got to remember it.  Thanks to those first few compatriots who exited the conductor’s car at 5:37 yesterday evening, first, and cleared the birth canal so the rest of us could follow you. I don’t know who you are but I salute you.

 

As for the rest of you OKs who were trying to get on… move out of the way! 

 

–Joe Lunievicz