TRASH TRAIN - all aboard?

I went to school in DC. If you're not American, or well-traveled, or didn't go to college with me, then you might not know that DC, which is also the capital of the United States of America, has a public transportation system. I purposely didn't use an adjective in describing the DC public transportation system because a) what is an adjective? and b) I'm not sure how I feel about it.

The DC Metro

Pros:

1) Called 'The Metro', just like in Paris. Le swoon
2) Lines are named after colors = easy to follow, and pretty!
3) Tells you exactly when it's coming (which...they do on SOME subway lines now, but, they've been taking the guesswork out of commuting in DC for way longer than in NYC)
4) Clean = No skittles on the metro or else some woman, who is around your mother's age, will sass you and say 'You know, I don't care, but you can get fined for eating on the metro you know. If I were you I'd put that away', and then make you feel like you're 10, and getting in trouble.

Cons:

1) Doesn't run after midnight on weekdays, or after 2 on weekends. What if you want to stay out until 2:15?
2) See above about not eating. YUCKY. I am hungry all the time but in particular I get cravings for foodz when I'm moving. So, you expect me to be on a moving object, after a day of work, or a day of class, or a night at the bars, and NOT want to eat? Luda.
3) SLOW. It takes forever to get everywhere. FOREVER. EVERYWHERE.
4) Well, actually...not everywhere because the metro doesn't go many places.

That being said, as I've noted, The New York City subway is not free of sins. In fact, it has many bad qualities. It talks about itself all the time. It ALWAYS takes the first sip of a fresh can of soda. AND, there are rats. And, service is being cut and it's a billion dollars and blabbity blah.

But, none of these offenses hold a candle (that is a saying, right? 'hold a candle to'...hmmm) to the trash train. YES. THE TRASH TRAIN.

I learned all about the trash train when I went to the Transit Museum a couple of years ago with Kristyn...and then with Debbie & Co. (All the cool kids go twice). It's a train, that , well, picks up trash from the different subway stations.

Here's what it looks like:

Now, us New Yorkers (are any of you questioning the fact that I just called myself a 'New Yorker'? I am, too. I think it takes 10 years for you to be an actual, legit, knows all the good restaurants and bars, New Yorker...), are impatient. There's a way we wait for the subway to come. We look down the tunnel to see if there are lights coming. We wait to hear a 'click' on the third rail, signaling that a close-by train is on the rail. We look around for signs that might indicate when the next train is coming. And then, we listen for a 'A ___ bound train is approaching ____ station' announcement. Then we repeat these actions until the train we're waiting for has come.

And because we're also good at multi-tasking, we do all of these things while listening to our ipods, and reading our books, and playing games on our phones, and talking to our friends, and napping while standing up.

With recent service cuts (despite raised prices...did I mention that already? I don't care), it's sometimes necessary to repeat the 'waiting for the train' procedures 5 or 7 or even 10 times before your train pulls into the station.

Now, my train, the R, shares tracks in Manhattan with the N and Q trains. So, sometimes you wait for the train to come, and see one coming, and get excited, only to see and then realize that the train pulling into the station is not your train.

It can be heart-breaking. But, in a situation like that, it's best to man up and realize that while you are not on your way home / to work / out / whatever it is that people do besides those three things I just mentioned, other people are and you should be happy for them, or at least try not to hate them too much.

But what about when, hypothetically, it's Wednesday, March 23, and it's 11ish, and you're on your way home from Brooklyn? What if you hope that you can make your train before it stops running at 11 pm ( WOMPING WILLOW ), so even though you're on a train that can get you into Queens (or wherever it is that you're trying to go since this is all hypothetical), but is a 20 minute walk from your apartment, you get off that train, and wait for your train, only to realize that it's not running because you were a few minutes too late, so you really SHOULDN'T have gotten off the train you were on before.

So you woman up and wait for the next wrong train, knowing that it will be about 20 minutes, so you now have to a) wait 20 minutes to b) take a train that's a 20 minute walk from your apartment so you can c) walk that 20 minutes even though it's d) a work night and b ) around 11:30.

And finally, after some time, you see a train come into the tunnel. You see the lights glowing up ahead. You hear the click of that third rail. You feel a promise about to be made. You feel a breeze start to stir...

And then, a nasty butt train, with TRASH all up in it, rolls in, and sits in the station, making the wait for the train you don't really want to take but have to take even longer.

What about then huh? Wouldn't you be offended sharing air-space, underground, where air is precious with a train full of trash from the subways, which, has to be dirtier than regular house trash or work trash?

Yeah. You probably would. And now you know what it's like having a trash train surprise you late at night when all you want is to be home in your bed in your leopard print pajama pants that you got from Bob's Sportings Good Stores (all hypothetical still) in 9th grade.

~~~~~~

Dear Trash Train,
You are GROSS. And I don't have anything more to to say to you, except this: I hate you and wish you were dead or that you were instead a vacuum hose that could be extended from the street into the stations and suck up all the trash sitting in the garbage containers. Because then, you wouldn't be taking up my time by cruising along on my train's / the train I need to take now because my train isn't running 's tracks.

Sincerely,
Beck E.