Slow week at work, so I took the slacker-esque 9:16 in. It seemed a normal ride until I got off at Grand Central, at which point things got a bit surreal.

First off, as I disembarked, I noticed there’d been a large group of cheerleaders, wearing pink miniskirts and sweaters emblazoned with “CTC”. Bringing up the rear were the chaperones–beaming parents with pink “Cheerleader Parent” T’s on. Was it a Good Morning America appearance? A late Gay Pride performance for hung over revelers? I’ll never know.

Then, as we climbed the ramp at track 40, I spied some curious graffitti: The word “DENTIST” in white spray paint along a lonesome stretch of wall in the depths of Grand Central that had to be hard to reach. Could there be a more lame tagger ID? Is the graffitti artist conducting a little pas de deux, a la Cost and Revs over a decade ago, with a fellow tagger named Cavity Creeps? (Sorry for the two French phrases in the previous sentence.)

A moment later, I saw a National Guardsman in full camouflage, walking along subterranean a platform to the deepest recesses of Grand Central, in an area no law-abiding person could ever hope to reach. He had a bag from the bodega and was walking towards another Guardsman. I’d never seen them that far below Grand Central.

And a moment after that, I saw a family of 6 in Grand Central, all wearing matching tie-dyes, right down to a baby in a stroller. The young daughters even had tie-dyed doorags.

The 6 train, fearsome bender of eyeglasses that it is, had no problem contributing to the surreal morning. The train was waiting for me, thankfully, and did not close the doors just as I approached. Instead it waited…and waited…and waited, not for the next express train on the opposite track, but for the one after that several minutes later. 

Work almost seemed like a relief by the time I got here.