Crowded 6 train headed downtown, 9:15 this morning.

I got on at 42nd. A guy squeezes by in front of me.

He’s a bit fey, neatly trimmed gray buzz cut, dressed in black, a large knapsack on his back.

He has a thermos in a side pouch of his knapsack. As he squeezes by me, the handle of the thermos hooks onto the iPod wire stretching from my ears to my pants pocket.

As the man has fully passed me, the thermos–defying the laws of gravity and logic–remains stuck on my earphone cord, hanging there precariously like a highwire guy after a two-martini lunch.

After staring at the thermos dangling in midair for several seconds, I remove it from my iPod cord, tap the man on the shoulder, and give it back to him.

“Thanks,” he says, no idea how I ended up with his beloved thermos.