There was a peculiar fellow on the 8:16 today. He was a big white guy, around 6′ 3″ and 220. He wore the geeky horn-rimmed glasses one tends to associate with psychos, and he had a blackened tooth on the side of his mouth.

I first spotted him when he stopped in the small alcove near the door that heads to the next car, next to the 1 3/4-seater. He stopped, put his bag down, and searched frantically for something in his wallet–presumbably a ticket. He seemed overly agitated, and I moved him out of the file of Ordinary Commuter into another file marked Person of Interest.

I sort of forgot about him as I lamented my dubious judgement in grabbing a window seat in a four-seater, and my foolhardly thinking in predicting that both the seat next to me and the seat across from me would remain open (seat next filled in North White, seat across filled…tightly…in White Plains).

The nervous guy had left the door alcove area, but then returned, trying the door between cars and failing to successfully get through it. (It was not locked.) He looked more agitated. He spoke hurriedly to the person sitting in the 1-3/4 seater; I don’t know what was said. The man wore a wedding ring, which led me to think he was not psycho. Then again, if we can borrow a hackneyed ’80s sitcom convention, maybe it was married life that pushed him to psychocity.

The man then disappeared down the aisle again.

Around this time, other people too had moved the man into their Person of Interest file; perhaps it’s the glut of terrorism stories in the news these past few weeks. There was the casual glancing around the train, to see who might be a potential ally should the man go crazy. The man cattycorner to me was an older fellow with a bad gimp; he wouldn’t do much good, but his cane, sitting on the seat between him and the woman who’d squeezed in across from me, might come in handy. That’s the way you think when you’re squeezed onto a train with a potential psycho and no way out.  

The man walked past us a third time. Eerily, he’d removed his jacket and was wearing–yes–a long-sleeve camouflage t-shirt. He was murmuring to himself and pacing nervously. He bent down and fished something from his bag. I looked across the aisle and saw three men of about 40 who were friends; they looked healthy and alert–good allies, just in case.

The agitated man stood in the entrance/exit train vestibule as we approached 125th. One of the three men across the aisle trained a careful eye on him. My back turned to the vestibule, I watched my commuter colleague for clues.

Thankfully, the psycho guy jumped off at 125th. A dozen people on our car followed him out, relieved to see his back.

I could see the guy on the platform. He sprinted into an elevator, slamming into a huge black guy who was trying to get out. Once inside, his arm crept outside the elevator, his fingers frantically slapping at the buttons on the outside wall, thinking this was perhaps the first elevator in elevator history where the riders select their floor with buttons placed on the outside of the car.

The doors shut and the psycho man was gone from our sight.

Sometimes we pay too much attention to the feats of our celeb heroes–Derek Jeter’s 2,722 singles as a Yankee, Mark Sanchez’s surprisingly strong start to his Jets career–and not enough to the everyday Joes pulling off great feats of strength and fortitude.

Such as me making the 7:50 train after waking up at 7:30 this morning.

I had to get the early train–yes, poor me, the 7:50 is the early train–after the Boss suggested all his minions be at a conference. I did not set an alarm clock, because I have two very trusty flesh-and-blood alarm clocks in Little G and Little Miss C. When was the last time I slept past, oh, 7:15, was pretty much how my thinking went before turning in last night.

Indeedy, The Missus gave me a shake at 7:30 this morning.

“It’s 7:30,” she said. Before she finished the statement, I was in the shower.

I was out by 7:35, and dressed by 7:40–no minor accomplishment, seeing as I had to dress up a bit for the conference. (Of course, dressing up a bit–like the 7:50 being the early train–is relative.)

I offered a quick kiss to the clan, shook the dew from the morning’s Times, and climbed on my bicycle at 7:43.

The streets are definitely more clogged since school started; it’s actually kind of a drag. I was stuck behind a silver Honda at the corner of Bradhurst. The Honda waited for…just…the…right…moment before going, and I actually went around it and crossed Bradhurst before the car did.

Right about now, dear reader, if you enter the city each day from the upper reaches of the Harlem Line, you’re probably saying, “That so-called early train is a 7:52, not a 7:50.” And you’d be right. I take the thing so infrequently that I didn’t even know the real time it was supposed to arrive, giving myself two extra minutes that–for the record–I didn’t even need.

The train pulled up, me and a bunch of 7:52-type strangers got on, and we made that weird stop in Mount Vernon about 20 minutes later.

The 7:52-ers are definitely a more corporate bunch, but I’d like to think I fit right in with my dress shirt and necktie, which I was able to fasten from the comfort of an unclaimed 1-3/4 seater. 

Hours later, back in the office, my co-worker–who splits his time between the Hudson and Harlem Lines, depending on his dog-sitter’s schedule–teased me about the tie.

“You can take it off now,” he said. “The conference is over.”

I told him I felt grown up in it, and looked forward to showing off the Grown Up TJ look to my fellow riders on the 5:46 home tonight.

A bit later, I ventured to the post office for stamps. The post office on 23rd and Lex took the stamp machines out about a year ago. I don’t know if the whole city did this, but it could go down as the most idiotic move in the history of idiotic moves. Whereas four or five machines once served the needers of stamps, those same fools must now stand on a line that counted about 50 people when I walked in.

Mercifully, a worker by the name of Stone ushered us needers of stamps over to a separate line. I asked Stone why the post office scrapped the machines.

“I only work here,” came Stone’s reply. Uh, thanks.

There was a woman behind me on the stamp line. She had straight blond hair, was about 45, and wore a blue pinstriped dress shirt and blue slacks–an outfit that would’ve worked equally well on a man. Certainly not unattractive, but everything about her screamed WASP.

She voiced some displeasure with the stamp line, and we briefly discussed the PO yanking the machines, much to the aggravation of customers, employees, everyone.

“Must be part of Obama’s socialism plan,” she said.

I stared at her, trying to follow the leap from A to B–or, in this case, A to Q.

I paid for my stamps, and, as is typically the case with me, thought of a half dozen snappy comebacks after I’d walked out of the post office. (Among the rejects: “Now, see, what you just said right there, well, that didn’t make any sense whatsoever.”)

Equally vexing, how did she end up identifying me as a friendly right-wing Barack-basher? Did three years in the suburbs really scrub any hint of counter-cultural funk from me?

I looked down and saw the answer: The necktie! The stupid necktie!

I ripped the thing from my neck like it was a boa and jammed it into my pocket.

As I gas on about every time I come back from vacation, there always seems to be havoc awaiting on the first ride into the city after an extended time away.

This morning I actually caught a break. The downpour held off just long enough to allow me to speedwalk to the train station without getting completely drenched. (I wasn’t about to leave The Missus’s shiny, unrusty bike out in the rain all day, and get her Strawberry Shortcake spoke-cards all wet.)

I hopped on the 8:16 and found a seat. I recognized the man that took the seat in front of me from my stop. He’s a normal looking guy, but seems sort of nervous on the train–even more nervous than me. A few times, I’ve seen him pick a seat, drop all his gear off on the rack, then stand up in the vestibule, presumably scanning the vista for a better seat, pacing the aisles, and ultimately moving. Not real sure what that’s about.

So anyway, the antsy guy sits in front of me. And sneezes–a huge, hearty, get-the-hell-out-of-my-way kind of sneeze, one that makes others in a six-foot radius wince, recoil, or both. Then he sneezes again, and again.

The guy is facing away from me, so it wouldn’t seem like a big deal. But he’s sneezing into his folded up AM New York, and there’s a window in the middle of his seat back, giving the cooties a wide, inviting tunnel through which to pass en route to my nasal cavity.

And to boot, Little Miss C was off her game all weekend with a fever and ear infection.

One more sneeze and I’m leaving, I think to myself. We’re hardly out of Hawthorne and Valhalla is a few minutes away–plenty of time to switch seats.

He sneezes.

This time I mean it, I say to myself. One more sneeze, I’m leaving.

He sneezes.

I’m temporarily paralyzed with indecision as “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” runs through my brain. I actually consider the people around me–the Bill Clinton lookalike in the Det. Sipowicz short-sleeve dress shirt to my left, the heavy-set woman buried in the Journal News sitting cattycorner to me. What will they think if I up and leave?

I think of Mr. Sneeze as well–is it insulting to vacate one’s seat when the reason for such departure is the actions of a fellow rider? I picture a tense, awkward exchange between us:

“What, afraid of a little sneezing?”

“I…uh…my daughter has a fever. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“So, like, my germs are gonna fly behind me, cling on to you, stick with you all day, and jump onto your precious daughter tonight?”

“Uh, well, yes, that’s what I was thinking. I know, it’s silly,” I say, trying to diffuse the situation with good natured bonhomie. “I guess being a parent makes you kind of crazy.”

He rolls his eyes. “I’ll say,” he says, then sneezes, not using his AM New York for cover.

Now I’m annoyed.

“Why can’t you just stay home for the day?” I say. “I mean, you’re SOOOO important at work–they simply can’t miss you for one day, right.”

He snarls. Then sneezes. A conductor separates us.

Back in the real world, the man sneezes again. That’s seven, by my count. With, say. 1.6 million germs per sneeze, that’s 11.2 million germs. I gather my bag, my raincoat, myself, and head to the next car.

Sneezy doesn’t say anything. I actually stumble on a precious 1-3/4 seater, which you’d simply kill for on a rainy day–room to hang your wet coat, your umbrella, even your dress shirt if you’re that kind of person.

I started thinking about how Metro-North actually let me off easy on this, my first day back from a break. Then the train crawled through the tunnel, and docked at Track 36 four minutes late.

Still, not too bad, I thought.

Then I got jammed up in an awful–and getting worse–pedestrian traffic situation at the Grand Central stairs heading down to the subway. The up escalator has been on the fritz for several days, meaning the stairwell that’s usually dominated by those descending to the subways has to be shared with the ascenders–causing massive gridlock at the top of the stairs. Come to think of it, there’s been trouble with that escalator–and that stairwell–off and on for several months.

The descenders were routed to the far left staircase, and the up-goers headed up the near-left stairs. We stood for several minutes at the top of the stairs, a few hundred of us waiting to make our descent. Mockingly, a sign on the busted escalator said it would not be fixed until July 31.

A man in a red MTA vest whose sole purpose appeared to be standing there in a red vest stood in between the two lines, staring at the ground and shaking his head.

It was the traffic jam we did not get heading back from the Delaware beaches yesterday, I thought as I inched forward.

At last, Metro-North claimed its pound of flesh from my sunburned ass.

Saw my first swine-flu mask on the walk to Grand Central yesterday. It was an Asian woman of about 25, walking south on Park Avenue South around 32nd Street at around 5:35.

It’s worth mentioning that I sat next to a man on the northbound train Friday evening who wore disposable plastic gloves. I doubt it was swine-related–was anyone even talking about the dreaded porcine pox last week?–but it caught my eye regardless. Maybe he just didn’t like getting newsprint on his fingers.

This swine thing certainly makes you think when you’re boarding a train and sitting amongst a few hundred of your coughing and wheezing best pals.

Suddenly the semi-private 1 3/4-seater–that blessed Murphy bed of a seat across from the conductor’s booth–looks better than ever.

I ventured into the city Saturday night for a concert, fooling Little G into thinking it was an hour earlier (much harder these days, with daylight savings time and all), and headed out the door for the 7:53.

Downtown Hummerville was quieter than quiet. I’d forgotten the parts of the Times I’d meant to bring on the train, and picked up my pace so I’d have a minute to duck into Pop’s Deli and grab one.

Alas, Pop’s was out of the dailies.

“Saturday’s a big reading day in Hawthorne,” the cheery proprietor told me.

They had a pair of Irish papers, the Echo and the Voice, which seemed sort of fitting to read before going to see the Pogues. I picked the Voice, which had Jimmy Fallon on the cover. The guy was about to ring me up when he spied a Times, separated into its various sections, behind the counter. He pieced it together, folded the Sports back into its original order, and dealt me the rag for a buck fifty. I put Fallon back on the rack on my way out.

A minute before train time, I didn’t see a soul–not one soul–on the platform, which of course got me thinking there was no 7:53, which would pretty much ruin my whole evening’s plans–or force me to salvage them with an expensive cab to White Plains. But a moment later she came chugging from behind Gordo’s, lights blazing in the dark night. A few bodies emerged onto the platform from the foul-weather greenhouse.

In the rare event that I’m schlepping to the city for a Saturday night, I tend to grab a semi-private 1 3/4-seater. The amateurs on the trains on the weekend tend to think these seats are off-limits (seasoned commuters know much, much better), and the Saturday evening train is louder than the Union Square platform with both a 4 and and 6 pulling in at the same time.

Alas, the two 1 3/4-seaters I tried were locked in the upright position. I found a seat amongst the boozy proletariat and cracked open the Sam Adams I’d brought from home. As I’d expected, it spilled a bit, shaken up from the walk. I lamented spilling beer on my sleeve, then remembered I was going to a Pogues show and would be covered in spilled booze halfway through “Streams of Whiskey.”

The beloved 1 3/4-seaters were again locked up when I hit the 12:06 heading for home. I had a trio of guys in their early 20s near me, loud and sort of drunk and kind of funny. The guy facing me a few rows away looked like he’d perhaps been at the Pogues show at Roseland too–Irish tweed cap pulled low over an Irish-American mug, Doc Martens, tattoos all over his neck (both in the shape of names in cursive and a pair of hands merged in prayer) and tats on both sets of knuckles spelling HOPE and LOVE–not unlike the cover of the Pogues album that shows PEACE and LOVE on a boxer’s knuckles.

There was another trio of young guys a few rows past them in a five-seater. Those guys were drunk as well and two of them were engaged in a slap fight, which prompted the punks near me to start mocking them. The punks had surmised that the slappers were preppy college kids and started lobbing the likes of “Dave Matthews Band!” and “Lacrosse!” and other preppy trappings their way, trying to egg them on. The preps, meanwhile, kept slapping each other.

I got up to use the bathroom and got a look at the rest of the punks. They weren’t the slightest bit thuggish, which surprised me that they were needling some other guys toward fisticuffs. I shut off my iPod and listened to their conversation. Turns out they were in a band, and were making up funny and melodic rhymes for the various station stops on the schedule.

Still, they kept egging on the preps, who’d ceased their slap fight around Fordham. The slappers didn’t take the bait. All taunting and slapping would stop momentarily when a young woman would happen down the aisle to use the bathroom, and both parties would try every single trick they knew to get the woman to stop and chat. At the risk of sounding like a schoolmarm, I can’t get over what the young chickies were wearing, both on the train in and the train home. Where were these slags when I was 21?

The rest of the ride was mostly uneventful. The punks eventually tired of taunting the preps, who became pre-occupied with a young woman in a dress cut mid-thigh who actually stopped to talk to them.

Around Valhalla, an intense smell of pot wafted through the train. Everyone in the car’s heads swiveled about in search of the smoking gun, so to speak, but no culprit was forthcoming.

Finally, the kid in the tweed cap said, “That’s not pot. That’s a real skunk.”

Mercifully, the 12:06 ambled into Hummerville moments later.

I made my way to Grand Central yesterday evening, filled with the early-January lament when one realizes the holidays are over, spring is not for several months, St. Patrick’s Day is no longer fun for people of a certain age, and, in short, there’s really nothing to look forward to for the foreseeable future.

Hammering home the notion is the fact that cheery holiday decorations have been replaced by spent Christmas trees on the sidewalk–greenery that’s been, quite literally, kicked to the curb.

I negotiated my way around  the discarded flora and hopped on the 5:46 at 5:45:30. I headed for the very back of the train, where I figured I had a better chance of scoring a seat.

The train was packed, as only a Monday train following a long holiday seconds before departure can be. The second to last car was jammed, I prepared to scoot through the door to the caboose. I waited for a man to pass through, a square-shouldered fellow with a dark buzz cut flecked with gray. He mumbled some negativity to himself, which I took to mean the rear car was seatless too.

I contemplated sitting on the floor by the side doors, as I occasionally do when the train is full and my pants are more than five years old. But my trousers were gray and relatively new, so I decided to stand.

On a whim, I figured I’d walk through a few cars toward the front, see if I could find something along the aisle up that way.

I’d just about passed through an entire car when I saw an open 1-3/4 seater, the Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range Model of train seats. I figured it must be locked in an upright position, as many are so conductors can use the space to peer out the window. I can’t think of the last time I scored a 1 3/4 seater on a trip out of Grand Central.

I nudged it. The seat fell into a downright position. How had this coup de grace seat, this $100 bill in the middle of the sidewalk, gone unclaimed on a packed train?

My gloomy perspective changed as I took in our departure from the comfort of my sweet seat. Nothing to look forward to? Not hardly. By my back of the envelope calculations, it’s only a few weeks before we’ll actually see a hint of the fading sun when we leave work for the day.

I can live with that.

You are known locally as the man who simply must have his 1-3/4 seater–those wonderfully cocooned off seats, occasionally locked in an upright position by killjoy conductors, that ensure that no fellow passenger is within 10 feet of you.

I see you, positioning yourself at the perfect spot on the platform each morning so that when the train doors open, you can bolt to your beloved 1-3/4 seater. I’ve even seen you lurking over a locked up seat until the conductor comes around, at which point you politely beg them to unlock it for you so you don’t have to sit with the other people and their imperceptible but no less infernal cooties.

When one looks up “O.Seat.D.” in one’s medical journals, you, sir, are pictured.  

Perhaps you’re claustrophobic, or have social anxiety, or some other afflication that makes 45 minutes in tight quarters with fellow riders unbearable. I hear ya.

Problem is, I like those 1 3/4-seaters too. Not as much as you–occasionally I’ll even bypass an open one to sit with the chattering hoi polloi–but I do enjoy me a little Metro-North privacy now and then.

I saw you heading up the stairs at Hummerville this morning, and I said, I’m taking that mofo’s 1-3/4 seater. The train pulled up and you prepared your move, unaware of just how stiff the competition was going to be this morning. I entered from the next door down and made a beeline for the 1-3/4 seater. I followed your progress through the door that separated us. You were held up as a woman in front of you pondered the option of left versus that of right.

Still, it was going to be close. I jetted through the door just as you approached the 1 3/4 seater. I craftily thrust my foot in front of it to mark my territory. Adding insult to injury, I even looked at the seat and shrugged casually, as if to say, ‘yes, this one will do, but it doesn’t really matter to me where I sit.’

You, sir, were stunned. What amount of currency you’d cough up to claim that seat–your seat!–back. In all your years of boarding the train at Hummerville, I don’t think you’d ever had serious competition for your 1-3/4 seater before. You didn’t even have a Plan B.

Actually, you did. You testily made your way through the door, where a second 1 3/4 seater sits, only to find that one occupied. The anxiety mounted, I know it did. Perhaps you bolted off the train to wait for the next arrival and, God willing, an open 1-3/4 seater.

To be honest, I don’t know what you did, because I was already immersed in my newspaper and iPod, enjoying my personal heater, my personal window, my personal coat hook, in my ambulatory little pied a terre.

See you tomorrow, suckah.  

Just a few days after spying a rider staring longingly at a 7 of diamonds playing card from a nudie deck, I happened to spot a little cheesecake starring a member of the opposite sex this morning.

I was on the 8:43 to the city and was lucky enough to score my own 1-3/4 seater–the set-apart, ultra private folding seat across from the conductor’s booth (by the way, these special seats are harder and harder to come by, as many conductors opt to lock them in the upright position).

Somewhere between the Bronx and 125th, the conductor’s door flew open. Taped inside the door was a photo or cutout of an attractive blonde teen. Unlike the seductively poised gent in the deck of cards last Thursday, the girl at least was clothed. She was a Hannah Montana-esque lass in a snug tank top. Maybe it was some conductor’s daughter, or girlfriend, or mistress, or friend with benefits–or just some hottie clipped from the Kohl’s catalog.

It’s nice to see a little spice on the ol’ commuter train.

So lengthy was my mini-vacation that I noticed a spider web had sprung from my bike to the lawnmower in our garage. Not having to commute for all of five days, I got a little perspective on the game, and in a mad flash of optimism and good cheer, came up with five whole things I like about my commute.

1. I don’t know a soul on my train. No husband of wife’s friend at the station to pretend I don’t see, no one from work I get stuck riding next to when they board in White Plains, no friend of a former friend I have to pretend I don’t see when they get on in Valhalla.

 2. 1-3/4-Seaters!  

3. Unlike Stamford or White Plains, or even Hartsdale, Hawthorne is a small station. That means, in the rare event that the Missus picks me up after work, she can pull right up to the stairs, grab me, and drive right out, instead of getting jammed up in big-station traffic.

4. The option of having a beer on the train.

5. On that topic, the pubs one sees from the Harlem line, including JC Fogarty’s in Bronxville, Harry’s of Hartsdale and Valhalla Crossing.

6.  The new bike rack at Hawthorne station! 

Geez, that’s 6. I must really be relaxed.

I had 14 minutes to get from the 6 train platform at 28th to my train at Grand Central, meaning I had time to spare.

Or not. The platform gradually filled up, more and more people shuffled to the edge to look for lights in the tunnel, and my anxiety level started to climb.

Then I had 5 minutes to get to my train, and hopefully get home in time to push cars around the family room with Little G before he went to bed.

People were downright antsy at this point. If it’s this long between cars, the trains are typically full, and you might not get on the next one.

A man who looked to be of Caribbean descent pulled an airplane bottle of clear liquor from his pocket, drained it in one gulp, and let the empty bottle slide to the ground like Michael depositing the smoking pistol on the restaurant floor in Godfather. It rolled until it stopped at a woman’s high-heel shoe. I shot him a dirty look. He shot it back.

An announcement came on the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a downtown train at Astor Place.”

Think about it for a moment. What good does a downtown train at Astor do you if you’re on 28th?

My train was leaving Grand Central in two minutes. I was toast. The next train was in a half-hour.

I exited the turnstile and went to the ticket window, where I asked for a refund (Hey, I had time to kill, and a point to make.)

“Sir, if the trains are working, there’s nothing I can do for you,” came her response.

I was going to point out that, if the trains were, in fact, working, I wouldn’t be asking for a refund. But she called me “Sir,” so I let it go.

I climbed to street level and started the slow walk to Grand Central in the cold, wet night. I called home and Little G made duck noises.

I thought I might take in a little Tartan Week action in Grand Central–pipers? whiskey?–but when I got there, the festival was closed for the night, and I felt like the kid in “Araby.”

With 15 minutes until departure, I figured I’d do some people-watching, an activity me and the Missus miss since moving out of the city. But I couldn’t find a seat that wasn’t next to a homeless person, so I bought my beer and boarded my train.

I scored an empty 1-3/4-seater, so the night wasn’t a total loss.