THE POWER OF NOW

At 9:10 a.m. I enter the F-train from my usual spot: the no-man’s land between the two stairs going up to the main level of Roosevelt Station in Jackson Heights.

Inside, a roomful of open seats becomes the setting for a game of musical chairs—and the music has just stopped.

When everyone’s finished jockeying for a seat, I find one in the corner at the bottom of the “L.” My bags between my legs, my pad out and my pen jotting. Two seats are still free in my third of the car. Nothing unusual, except three commuters happen to remain standing.

I know why nobody has taken one of the seats. It’s next to a man who is asleep and seated in the pair of seats at the front of the car, next to the door. He also has placed a shopping bag and two suitcases on the seat next to him against the wall. Wearing a black baseball cap, he’s maybe in his forties and using his fist to keep from nodding forward. His belongings aren’t moving, and nobody’s asking him to move them.

The other seat is across from me, the center seat of three. A middle-aged woman is to one side, reading Oprah-champion Eckhart Tollet, and an older guy is to the other with a book of his own on his lap. The female bookend seems approachable, sit-down-next-to-able. In black slacks and a white shirt—a hard glasses case bulging through the pocket—the male bookend reads a small-print volume with glasses that he squints through and he underlines passages with a blue pen. He’s also holding a Dunkin Donuts coffee cup, regular size. I bet there’s three sugars in it. When he takes a break from reading, he turns the cup around, examining the circumference.

The train passes two stops. Nobody takes the empty seat. I don’t get it. There’s nothing on the seat. And the people on either side are not so big that there’s only a smidgen of seat available.

Finally, a man enters in navy slacks, wingtip shoes, white shirt and red tie. This passenger looks Indian, probably in his fifties, and carries a big, black briefcase. He looks at the two people flanking the seat. They look up at him. Eckhart Tollet gets placed on the woman’s lap.

“Excuse me,” says the man in the red tie says, as he turns around and sits. The man with glasses has just enough time to shift out of his way before Red Tie’s butt grazes him. The woman reading Tollet pivots to move over—but her hips are already against the partition. She has nowhere to go.

Red Tie chooses the elbows-forward position, ceding the back of the seat to his neighbors, who, with a joint sigh, rest their elbows back and down. Red Tie hunches forward some. The train pulls out of the station; we all readjust our positions. Eckhart Tollet rises from the woman’s lap. She shifts a little left and right, acquiring a bit of space with the movement. The blue pen resumes underlining.

The excitement over, I close my notebook, lean back and shut my eyes. I’ll rest them for a moment—before 23rd Street arrives, and I depart.

—Joe Lunievicz

The Scootch 

What would happen if you sat down next to someone on the subway when the car wasn’t crowded — when there was space available to not be next to someone?  

Here’s what I mean. You get on the subway and it’s not crowded so there are five or six people seated along the bench with ample space between each of them. Do you sit next to someone or do you sit in the open space equidistant from your colleagues to either side?

I watched yesterday as people chose their seats as I returned around 5:15 p.m. on an F train that remarkably, was not packed. It was a gray bench car instead of my beloved orange and tans. As expected, most people sat in the empty spaces, as far from their fellow riders as possible.  So what happens when the car starts to fill and the empty space becomes a true commodity? Someone has to scootch (slide their butt) over in order for someone else to sit. Usually some brave soul tries to make eye contact after standing in front of the small clearing, waiting. Sometimes they ask for the seat with words, “Can I sit?” Sometimes it’s with pleading eyes. Sometimes – and this is my favorite – they simply turn and present their rear end, assuming that people will either make room for them, or that once ensconced in the seat, their butt will find the room it needs.

There is usually a moment of hesitation before said butt is lowered onto the seat – a way of saying, “Here I come,” before actual butt to seat contact occurs. It’s just enough time for those seated to either side of the clearing to scootch out of the way.  I saw a woman today, yellow dress, use this technique. She edged her hips into a space between a man and a woman, forcing them to scootch an inch or two to their sides. Her hips became a crowbar to open that small space for her body to fit into. Then, when she tried to lean back against the bench and take full advantage of her success, her shoulders wouldn’t fit. She backed her right elbow twice into a man’s forearm as he read the Times.

By the third attempt he shifted to his right and made room. It was tight, but she was in. She adjusted her skirt, placed her bag on her lap, and smiled. So I decided to experiment today. The car was only about a quarter full and there was plenty of empty gray bench space on the F train that pulled into the 23rd Street station. But instead of sitting down on the open plain, I sat down right next to someone who had space open to his right.

It was a suit reading the Daily News. He immediately scootched to his right, which brought him up against the railing. I scootched to my right, into his vacated space so that we were hip to hip.

I took out my book, Jack Kornfield’s After The Ecstasy Comes the Laundry. The suit stared at me for a moment then went back to reading his paper. No further action was taken on his part. As other passengers came into the car, the space to my left filled up.  This is how revolutions are begun.

–Joe Lunievicz

Yes, Congress has decreed that today, June 18, is National Take the Seat With the Bag On It Day. What does that mean to you, the commuter? It means that, upon boarding the train and assessing your seating options, it’s recommended that you opt for the seat that someone is clearly preventing you from taking by putting their bag on the seat next to them.

You see, the person who’s playing fair and leaving the seat available should be rewarded by getting to retain an open seat next to them. The person who’s taking up two seats, on the other hand, should be forced to move their bag under the seat, to their lap, to the overhead rack. As any parent–or product of parents–will tell you, negative behavior should not be rewarded.

So stand tall, or at least sit tall, and demand the seat with the bag on it. Congress says so, and you don’t want to go against Congress.