Sunshine, all the time
Mar. 21st, 2002 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quislibetThe bells! The bells! It sounded like a Salvation Army Santa was set up for business upstairs. But it was only the landlords' dog. Perhaps it was sent by some higher power, as my alarm had not in fact been turned on.
I rolled over to see what time it was, and saw that the alarm was imminent. But it wasn't, really, and fortunately I had not fallen back to sleep before hearing the click that indicated that the moment had come when the alarm would have gone off, had I bothered to turn it on as well as set it last night.
Shower. Dress. (Which black shirt to wear?) Make coffee. (Mmmm. Cofffeeee.) Eat breakfast. Choose footwear. (Yesterday I chose poorly.) Go to catch bus.
And the bus hurtles past without so much as a hello.
I am fairly sure that the driver could see me there, and it wasn't as though I was standing six inches to the left of the official stop or anything. Or, if I was, I have been all along, at least one morning a week for a year, and there's never been a problem before, and it was the usual driver.
I realize therefore that I will not have time to pick up J.'s passport, renew my prescription (in person, as the automatic refill by phone wasn't working, some glitch with my record), AND go to my bank to buy some spankin' new euros for next week's trip. I decide that I will postpone the bank trip for tomorrow or Monday, and that today I might as well take the 9:15ish train that goes right next door to the Thomas P. O'Neill Federal building anyway. That gives me forty-five minutes to kill, so I go home for a bit.
My choice of reading this morning on the train: Catherine Edwards' The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome or Katherine Kurtz's St. Patrick's Gargoyle. Should have gone with Catherine over Katherine: the scholarly work might have had less in the way of tedious exposition than the rollicking fantasy novel.
(Oh well. I like Kurtz's other stuff, and have even read some of it recently enough that it's not just fond memories from my awkward teen years.)
The Thomas P. O'Neill Federal Building is, as I have only recently become aware, the large building right next to the Fleet Center via which I grudgingly commute several times a week. ("Some office building, I dunno, doesn't matter.") Once past the metal detectors the visitor is greeted with a smirking portrait of Dick Cheney and a goofy grinning picture of Dubya, Leader of the Free World. I wander the second floor, seeking the passport pickup window, armed with my signed permission slip to handle the passport of another human being in an official capacity and my dubious-looking Rhode Island identification card (I should get a Massachusetts one, as it is the nature of the RI card to look fake even though it is not, and anyway I no longer live in Rhode Island, but I digress). I follow signs. I follow arrows. They lead me into a dead-end cafeteria. Eventually I ask someone, then another someone (twice), and find the right office. An alarmingly cheerful woman handles the transaction ("Those Rhode Island IDs! I almost need binoculars to read them!") and off I go back out into the world.
At the T station there's a 73-year-old New Yorker who thinks that Japan (all of it, I guess) and New York have the best subway systems in the world. He's Catholic and has worked... well, suffice it to say that I know more about him than one normally learns about a fellow commuter with whom one does not actually have a conversation. He is headed for the B line, and is alarmed that he cannot actually get on it at North Station. A T worker is having little luck convincing him that it's only a couple of stops to Government Center where he can change trains. "Government Center is the next stop, right?" the New Yorker repeats. I intervene to say it's the stop after next, and he can get on the B train there. Though no new information is contained in my statement, it seems to calm him.
At this point he begins to volunteer his opinion of subway systems the world o'er. It is not immediately apparent that this is directed at me, as I have ceased to make eye contact. He mutters about being from New York, about being Catholic, and many, many other things. He tries to ask me about my life, but I provide only the shortest of answers and it seems to discourage him.
-----
Interlude: My old roommate Becca, who by coincidence will be hosting J. and me in Paris very soon, has a favorite story about a long bus trip she once took in California. A man bopping to his inner muse would frequently half sing, half chant "Sunshine! All the Time! Sunshine! All the Time!" People were a bit weirded out by him, even in California. But then at one stop another man got on, who began to pontificate loudly. He sat down, as chance would have it, next to Mr. Sunshine, who was visibly alarmed.
-------
I felt a little bad at not engaging the New Yorker in conversation -- surely he was just a lonely old man seeking human companionship in a strange city. But I was out of sorts, and as he was headed for the B train, I didn't want to get trapped in a conversation all the way to BU. I in fact made sure to get onto a different car when the E train pulled up.
At Government Center I got out and walked over to the Dunkin' Donuts stand for some coffee. The New Yorker also exited there, shouting expletives back into the car. "Fuckin' four-eyes! Don't you fuckin' mess with me. I'm a New Yorker. Don't mess with me. Every fuckin' time I come to Boston you give me shit. Don't you fuckin' mess with me. I got friends. The Mob. I'm in the Mob. Fuckin' asshole. You'll be dead," he said, and other such like, as he also approached the donut stand. I let him cut in front of me. "You gotta give me a discount. I'm a senior. 73 years old today," he said. "I worked at a Dunkin' Donuts for 10 years and I know you gotta give me a discount."
Okay, so maybe it's not so bad that I didn't get involved in conversation with this man.
One young employee, perhaps not having witnessed New York Man's train exit, thought he'd banter with the former fellow Man of Donuts. "Naw, you're no senior. You look 35 to me."
"35. I'm no fuckin' 35-year old. Don't you try to cheat me. I'm a New Yorker. You don't wanna mess with me. I got my senior discount coming" (and then something unintelligible about Marines and decapitation by bayonet). His transaction having been made, he wandered off to find someone else to harangue. I could hear his largely unintelligible vocalizations, and saw him directing them at a young woman who stood rigidly facing away from him (I could just make out something about the fact that he was a New Yorker, something about Protestants, another mention of the Mob). Soon, however, he seemed to have found another man about his age who either couldn't get away fast enough (he had a cane) or else was genuinely interested in what the New Yorker had to say. The B train came, and I lost track of him, on purpose.
Then there was a long wait for my prescription, and now I'm at work, and so on.
The end.
I rolled over to see what time it was, and saw that the alarm was imminent. But it wasn't, really, and fortunately I had not fallen back to sleep before hearing the click that indicated that the moment had come when the alarm would have gone off, had I bothered to turn it on as well as set it last night.
Shower. Dress. (Which black shirt to wear?) Make coffee. (Mmmm. Cofffeeee.) Eat breakfast. Choose footwear. (Yesterday I chose poorly.) Go to catch bus.
And the bus hurtles past without so much as a hello.
I am fairly sure that the driver could see me there, and it wasn't as though I was standing six inches to the left of the official stop or anything. Or, if I was, I have been all along, at least one morning a week for a year, and there's never been a problem before, and it was the usual driver.
I realize therefore that I will not have time to pick up J.'s passport, renew my prescription (in person, as the automatic refill by phone wasn't working, some glitch with my record), AND go to my bank to buy some spankin' new euros for next week's trip. I decide that I will postpone the bank trip for tomorrow or Monday, and that today I might as well take the 9:15ish train that goes right next door to the Thomas P. O'Neill Federal building anyway. That gives me forty-five minutes to kill, so I go home for a bit.
My choice of reading this morning on the train: Catherine Edwards' The Politics of Immorality in Ancient Rome or Katherine Kurtz's St. Patrick's Gargoyle. Should have gone with Catherine over Katherine: the scholarly work might have had less in the way of tedious exposition than the rollicking fantasy novel.
(Oh well. I like Kurtz's other stuff, and have even read some of it recently enough that it's not just fond memories from my awkward teen years.)
The Thomas P. O'Neill Federal Building is, as I have only recently become aware, the large building right next to the Fleet Center via which I grudgingly commute several times a week. ("Some office building, I dunno, doesn't matter.") Once past the metal detectors the visitor is greeted with a smirking portrait of Dick Cheney and a goofy grinning picture of Dubya, Leader of the Free World. I wander the second floor, seeking the passport pickup window, armed with my signed permission slip to handle the passport of another human being in an official capacity and my dubious-looking Rhode Island identification card (I should get a Massachusetts one, as it is the nature of the RI card to look fake even though it is not, and anyway I no longer live in Rhode Island, but I digress). I follow signs. I follow arrows. They lead me into a dead-end cafeteria. Eventually I ask someone, then another someone (twice), and find the right office. An alarmingly cheerful woman handles the transaction ("Those Rhode Island IDs! I almost need binoculars to read them!") and off I go back out into the world.
At the T station there's a 73-year-old New Yorker who thinks that Japan (all of it, I guess) and New York have the best subway systems in the world. He's Catholic and has worked... well, suffice it to say that I know more about him than one normally learns about a fellow commuter with whom one does not actually have a conversation. He is headed for the B line, and is alarmed that he cannot actually get on it at North Station. A T worker is having little luck convincing him that it's only a couple of stops to Government Center where he can change trains. "Government Center is the next stop, right?" the New Yorker repeats. I intervene to say it's the stop after next, and he can get on the B train there. Though no new information is contained in my statement, it seems to calm him.
At this point he begins to volunteer his opinion of subway systems the world o'er. It is not immediately apparent that this is directed at me, as I have ceased to make eye contact. He mutters about being from New York, about being Catholic, and many, many other things. He tries to ask me about my life, but I provide only the shortest of answers and it seems to discourage him.
-----
Interlude: My old roommate Becca, who by coincidence will be hosting J. and me in Paris very soon, has a favorite story about a long bus trip she once took in California. A man bopping to his inner muse would frequently half sing, half chant "Sunshine! All the Time! Sunshine! All the Time!" People were a bit weirded out by him, even in California. But then at one stop another man got on, who began to pontificate loudly. He sat down, as chance would have it, next to Mr. Sunshine, who was visibly alarmed.
-------
I felt a little bad at not engaging the New Yorker in conversation -- surely he was just a lonely old man seeking human companionship in a strange city. But I was out of sorts, and as he was headed for the B train, I didn't want to get trapped in a conversation all the way to BU. I in fact made sure to get onto a different car when the E train pulled up.
At Government Center I got out and walked over to the Dunkin' Donuts stand for some coffee. The New Yorker also exited there, shouting expletives back into the car. "Fuckin' four-eyes! Don't you fuckin' mess with me. I'm a New Yorker. Don't mess with me. Every fuckin' time I come to Boston you give me shit. Don't you fuckin' mess with me. I got friends. The Mob. I'm in the Mob. Fuckin' asshole. You'll be dead," he said, and other such like, as he also approached the donut stand. I let him cut in front of me. "You gotta give me a discount. I'm a senior. 73 years old today," he said. "I worked at a Dunkin' Donuts for 10 years and I know you gotta give me a discount."
Okay, so maybe it's not so bad that I didn't get involved in conversation with this man.
One young employee, perhaps not having witnessed New York Man's train exit, thought he'd banter with the former fellow Man of Donuts. "Naw, you're no senior. You look 35 to me."
"35. I'm no fuckin' 35-year old. Don't you try to cheat me. I'm a New Yorker. You don't wanna mess with me. I got my senior discount coming" (and then something unintelligible about Marines and decapitation by bayonet). His transaction having been made, he wandered off to find someone else to harangue. I could hear his largely unintelligible vocalizations, and saw him directing them at a young woman who stood rigidly facing away from him (I could just make out something about the fact that he was a New Yorker, something about Protestants, another mention of the Mob). Soon, however, he seemed to have found another man about his age who either couldn't get away fast enough (he had a cane) or else was genuinely interested in what the New Yorker had to say. The B train came, and I lost track of him, on purpose.
Then there was a long wait for my prescription, and now I'm at work, and so on.
The end.
