Got off the 6 train and exited on Park between 26th and 27th.

I’m doing the regular high-speed slalom through pedestrians when I feel a whack in the middle of my back (technically, my knapsack).

I assume it’s a co-worker, because that’s what you do to a friendly co-worker when he flies by you on the sidewalk. You whack him on the back. Sometimes you say, “Wassup, dude?”

I whip around and see what looks like a dandy version of Uncle Junior: 75-year-old guy wrapped in a form-fitting gray and black herringbone overcoat, face tensed into an angry scowl. Like an old man trying to return soup at the deli, as George Costanza once said.  

“What the f*** is the problem?” I ask.

Now we’re walking side by side. Dandy Uncle Junior doesn’t answer.

“Seriously, what the f*** is the problem?”

I’m about to let it go. I mean, how hard do you go after a septuagenarian in a form-fitted overcoat?

Dandy Junior flings a hand skyward and blurts out, “You cut in front of me!”

He then bolts a quick right onto 26th.

I stay on Park, comforted by the knowledge that I could’ve taken him.  

[photo: hbo.com]

Lady on the downtown 6 this morning, editing a manuscript. Pretty, about 40, black, a blue beret atop blondish hair. Gray herringbone slacks, expensive bag.

She was marking up the manuscript pretty good.

Name of the manuscript: “Stripper Pole to Heaven.”

If that thing becomes a book, I’m buying.

The construction workers on the 6 train heading uptown.

It was a packed train. By the looks of our faces, we’d all had a long day.

There were four of you. Some had Jamaican accents, some sounded as though from the boroughs. You wore jeans and sweatshirts, doorags and boots. You’d been working with your calloused hands all day. You probably just wanted to soak them in warm water.

You were joking and laughing, teasing one guy about his young age, talking about girls–something about one who wasn’t quite 18 yet–happy to be done working for the day.  

The train pulled into 28th. People on the platform looked in dismay at how little room there was on board. Some tried to squeeze on.

“Watch the puppy!” one of you construction guys yelled.

Everyone looked down. Were we, in fact, trampling on a poor little puppy?

It was so crowded we couldn’t see our feet. Of course we weren’t trampling on a puppy! You were joking.

The train got to 33rd. A few people got off. Several more tried to get on.

“Watch the puppy!” one of you yelled. “There’s a puppy on the floor!”

We were in on the joke. Someone giggled.

42nd Street. Packed. Watch the puppy, we get it, we get it.

You guys were howling like Hef at a Friar’s roast. Watch the puppy!

Honestly, guys, it wasn’t that funny.

OK. Maybe it was.

Sincerely,

Trainjotting

6 p.m. yesterday, mostly full 6 train heading up to GCT. A beggar enters the car between 28th and 33rd. “Excuse me…” the spiel begins in a vaguely Hispanic accent.

The man makes his way through the crowded car, carrying two full tabloid news pages laminated on cardboard. They’re the story of a man horrifically burned by acid.

He, in fact, is that man.

He’s got brown skin and his face looks like an avalanche in motion–forehead, cheeks and chin in a mad rush to tumble off the poor guy’s skull. A pair of eyeglasses desperately cling to what’s left of his nose. It may be the most disturbing sight you ever see on the subway.

And boy, did people reach for their wallets, shoveling not just a single bill but handfuls of them–a windfall unlike anything I’ve ever seen a subway beggar command before. This guy wasn’t collecting nickels and dimes.  

All the while, the poor fellow mumbled “God bless you,” riders passing along cash and struggling hard to avert their eyes.

I left work with more than enough time to catch the 6 to Grand Central, or so I thought. The platform was about a third full–typical for a workday evening.

A few minutes passed, and the platform started to fill. The first tickle of anxiety crept in.

A few more minutes passed, and the platform was good and full. Not to worry, the lights of the 6 were visible in the distance.

The 6 limped in a moment later, and it was packed to the gills. No one was getting on.

That’s it, I reckoned, I’ve missed the 5:46. I’ve thrown away 24 minutes of play time with Little G.

But, sure enough, I saw the lights of another 6 down the platform. Hope!

It was 5:40. I set my odds of making the 5:46 at 35%. 

The train took its sweet time getting into the 28th Street stop. My odds dropped to 25%.

I got on board and, over the course of the two stops I was on, wiggled my way close to the doors. I jumped out at 42nd. The stairwell was relatively empty, and I breezed through–my odds jumping back to 35%.

I did my darndest Latrainian Tomlinson as the seas parted in front of me en route to track 110. I glided down the ramp, seeing the 5:46 preparing to leave.

Which it did, just as I set foot on the platform.

I saw a conductor I recognized, his head out the window as the train made its way toward the Harlem night.

“Yo!” I yelled, as if those two letters would magically halt the train and open the door.

He turned around. He shrugged. He tapped his watch and shrugged again.

Crestfallen, and thinking of all the ways I could’ve shaved 10 seconds off and caught the train, I made my way up the ramp, 24 freakin’ minutes to kill in Grand Central. My stop-and-smell-the-flowers lesson from last week still in mind, I did all the things I wish I was doing each day as I rush to thetrain: sit on the miserably hard plastic chairs in the lower level and people-watch, take in the light show upstairs.

Three minutes later, I decided to do a little holiday shopping in the temporary shops set up in the Vanderbilt Room. One booth sold miniature subway trains that fit on Thomas the Tank Engine tracks. I eyed the 4 train for Little G, who’s obsessed with all things train-related, but decided it was too close to the 6 that had broken my heart not 15 minutes ago.

I opted for a mini F-train, and made my way toward the platform for the 6:10.

FREMIX: \FREE miks\ noun: The aural overspill from a fellow subway rider’s portable musical device, usually identified by thumping bass grooves.

Usage: I turned off my iPod on the 6 train because the Jay-Z cranking from the guy across the train’s headphones sounded better than the Wang Chung I was listening to.

The woman who picked up someone’s discarded Google Maps directions on the subway platform yesterday.

It was the 6 train around 6 p.m. You were about 45, with frosty blonde hair, white pants (way, way after Labor Day!) cut in a mom-jeans style (high waist, baggy legs, tapered ankle), only corduroy, and a cardigan with square shoulders and an argyle design.

You had the slightly frazzled look of a Midwestern middle school teacher, or a woman whose siblings have just now suggested she do a little time in a nearby psychiatric center. Just a few days of rest, they offer perkily…

There was a folded sheet of paper with what looked like directions from Google Maps on the ground. They sat in front of an attractive blonde woman, in stylish flared jeans and black boots with a dangerous-looking heel, who rummaged through her purse as it rested on her thigh. I walked by and was tempted to say something to her, because it appeared she may have dropped the directions, and because she was attractive.

As I got closer, I saw that the paper was right in front of the flared-jeans woman; if it was hers, she surely would’ve seen it there on the ground. I stayed silent.

Then you came walking down the platform, Midwestern Wearer of Mom Cords. You strode toward the folded sheet of paper, and in a single fluid motion, bent to pick it up. Only you didn’t deposit it in the nearest trash receptable; no, you opened the paper as you kept walking. As you reached the end of the platform–the very end, where the homeless and the rats go–you studied it carefully.

Were you some spy caught up in a clandestine cloak-and-dagger operation? Your cover sure fooled me (Mom cords! Genius!).

Or were you simply nosy, wondering with Mitty-esque curiousity where somebody with a more interesting life was planning on traveling to this evening?

Did you, in fact, hop into a cab after exiting the subway and direct the driver toward this illicit destination? Did you show up at the party full of strangers, standing out in your frumpy attire in a room full of hipsters, suits or ethnic types?

What did you talk about?

And where did you get those pants?

Sincerely,

Trainjotting

The 28th Street platform for the uptown 6 was pretty full. The train eased in and it too was full. I squeezed on.

A young Asian woman with a streak of blond in her bangs stood near the door. There was a bit of room behind her. Since I could feel people pushing behind me to get in, I said, “Do you think you could move over a bit?” and nodded toward the open space.

I said it nicely. I asked, I didn’t demand.

“I’m getting off at the next stop,” came her reply. She inched forward and I squeezed past her to free up a little space.

The doors eventually shut and we headed uptown. A black man in diamond earrings and a black baseball hat with the size sticker still on the brim (7 7/8) asked a middle aged blonde woman if she wanted his seat. She smiled and declined. A hipster-y chick read a book with the chapter heading “Anton Tries Buttsex–Hilarity Does Not Ensue.”

Me, I held on to the pole and hoped I didn’t come off as unpleasant in that exchange.  

We got to 33rd Street. The doors opened. People got off. People got on. The young Asian woman froze.  Seats opened. I grabbed one. The Asian woman took the one next to me.

I found myself wondering about her as we ambled toward 42nd, not six inches from each other. Had she changed her travel plans on the fly? Had she thought of some unpleasant incident at 33rd and decided to avoid it? Had she flat-out lied to me? Why?

I wanted to ask, but I didn’t.

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

The Woman With the Unreal Center of Gravity on the 6 Train.

You’re a short-ish black woman with strawberry-brown hair, stout of build and exceedingly stout of heart. There was a tattoo on your bicep and you wore fake rhinestone sunglasses atop your head.  You smiled when someone bumped into you and you were kind of cute.

The 6 was about to take off from 28th Street. It was full, but not packed. You could’ve slid over to a pole and gripped the thing for stability.

But no. You knew you could absord the train’s stops, starts, bucks and kickbacks without holding on. While the rest of us would surely end up amidst the muck on the floor, or sprawled across some guy with a pocket square reading AM New York, you simply had to flex your exceptional calves, your bionic thighs–your core, in Pilates parlance–and keep your feet cemented to the ground.  

I must say, oh Woman of Steel, I’ve never seen someone not opt for the support of a pole in my 16-odd years of riding the subway. And I may never again. So I’m thankful to have encountered you–and to have seen you showcase your non-pareil urban survival skills–just the once.

Michael Jordan poured in 55 against the Knicks at the Garden in ‘95. Texas QB Vince Young rambled for 200 yards in the ‘06 Rose Bowl. But you, you pillar of subway strength and stamina, do this each and every day.

Sincerely,

Trainjotting