The woman cleaning up coffee from the floor of the 6 train this morning.

I wonder about you.

A full hour since I saw you, I’m still wondering.

There was a coffee spill on the downtown 6 that made the Exxon Valdez look like Little G had dropped a juice box. We stepped over and around it as we entered, found spots to stand that seemed to be out of the rushing java rapids.

You grabbed a spent AM New York, stood from your seat, and began mopping it up. Your posterior was prodigious, to be honest, and you wagged that big thing in various riders’ faces as you cleaned up the java mess. People smirked. I saw them.

Then you took the soaked pages, deposited them in a plastic bag, and tied the bag shut with an emphatic yank.

What followed was equally impressive. You didn’t adopt a mask of self-righteousness, you didn’t look around the car to register the approval of your fellow straphangers. You just sat there blankly as the smell of spilled coffee tickled our nostrils.

I’m wondering. Was it you who spilled? I did notice you set down a small coffee cup with a lid before you commenced your cleaning. If so, I applaud your accountability, your selflessness. I spilled it, I’ll clean it up. Isn’t that what the subway, the city, the world needs just a little bit more of?

But I’m wondering if, ya know, you’re all there. Because no one does that. If you spill, you shrug your shoulders apologetically, give the rest of the car some vague ‘I’ll try harder next time’ look, and try not to look at the mess you made before exiting at the next stop to avoid further embarrassment. You don’t clean it up.

But you, you do. You had black hair with specks of gray on the temple, close cropped in what one might call an unstylish boy cut. You had a Metro-Card in a plastic sleeve around your neck, and a ring full of keys there too that would make Schneider from “One Day at a Time” blush.

You seemed perhaps… not normal. Still, I can learn from you. We all can learn from you. If I see you again, I’d like to buy you a coffee.

But please, be more careful with it.

Regards,

Trainjotting