2003-05-27 - 1:03 p.m. Awakening 5 Snapshot 5/23/03 I am taking the 3:10 train back from work. I love taking the earlier train for many reasons. First and foremost, because I get home earlier. Second, because there are fewer people. And though there is something to be said for a packed train, I prefer my breathing space. I decided to sit down. This is a questionable choice. On this train, you sit with someone, and since I am alone, I sit with another stranger. I usually try to sit with a woman. This is because I think women aren�t as crazy as men, and are more respectful to strangers. Mostly they are just less crazy. Plus, I am very respectful and normally this is good. However, women are more likely to talk to me than men are. This is something I also want to avoid. I just don�t feel like having a forced conversation everyday on the way home. Maybe its selfish, but the train is my time to think, and I enjoy every minute of my commute. This 3:10 however, has neither an open seat nor a woman sitting alone. I sit next to a fairly crazy looking guy. I have got my book and headphones as a barrier. These have been broken before, but are pretty reliable. The truly crazy cut right through them though. As I sit down I eye this guy up. He�s taller than me, and dirtier. He�s wearing a sweater and has a poorly designed facial hair arrangement. These are good signs of craziness. A sure sign is the old neck beard. He�s wearing acid wash black jeans. He�s got white high tops. His wallet is out. I think nothing of the wallet at first, since I too am thumbing at my wallet to show the conductor my ticket, but he�s got something more. I want to avoid eye contact though. To many times I have been nailed with the eye contact to a crazy person on the public transportation. That�s like waving a red sheet at a bull. They are coming for you no matter what. After the conductor passes I notice high tops put away his pass, but leaves his wallet out. He is still going through it. I am pretty sure that I have a fruit loop. But then I look. And I see something I didn�t expect. A picture of these two babies. One is clearly older as they are both posed for the camera. They are wearing cute little green bow in their baby hair, and matching baby overall jumper things. I am not one to say this often, but these two are adorable. He puts that snapshot away, and takes out another one, of them older, as younger girls posed again in a family picture. They are wearing different clothes, but are probably only three years older. They are wearing their Sunday best. Then he takes out another photo. This one is worn more than the other two. I have stopped reading completely at this point; the pictures are much more interesting. This one is of his family. Or, I assume, since a cleaner shaven version of him was in it with a wife and the kids. They looked very happy in the photo. They were all wearing their suits and dresses. It was him his two daughters and his wife. I gasped slightly as a caught a bit of condensation on the photo that had fallen from the ceiling. Rather the saline that had fallen from his eye. At this point, I didn�t hear it before thanks to my headphones, but he is and maybe had been crying. I am slightly taken back. I want to do something, but I know better. I am not that person. My interaction is meant to be limited by reading, cutting off my sight, and my headphones, cutting off my hearing. That leaves talking, and I am certainly to scared and embarrassed to begin talking to him. Though I want to talk. My throat is dry with the words that will never come out. I want to find out, what went wrong. What happened? Are they gone? Are they dead? Did she take them? Was it money? Was it lost love? Did you ever love each other? Why did this happen? Was it something she did Mr. Hightop? Did you do something to drive them from you? Are you still together, but apart in your mind? Was that day perfect and now its destroyed by something else? I will never know. I am not built to experience that interaction. I just observe. I see this man�s pain and begin to realize that he is a story. A work in progress. I am just looking at a snapshot of a low in his life. A moment of despair. I don�t know that road behind him or the path he is clearing in front of him. I only know that he has a story. And that story might be better than mine. | |||||||||||
