Possibly the most unwelcome phrase one can hear while making use of public transportation is "police action." It was the last stop in Brooklyn on the Q, and various uncoordinated pronouncements from the train conductors (who didn't have much information) and the station PA (a godlike voice heard seldom, and always from a maddeningly undisclosed location: one might be getting instructions from the station manager or from some Transit Authority command bunker miles away) offered a charmingly varied set of directives and updates, along the lines of (a) This train is out of service, take the R train across the platform a couple of stops, and then transfer to another line; (b) Nothing is going to Manhattan from here; go to the downtown platform, take a train BACK one stop and transfer there to another line, or (c) "We're being held in the station by the dispatcher."
As is often the case in these situations, passengers turned to one another for information. Those who couldn't hear got the story from those who could. Seeing a group cross the platform hurriedly I walked across myself and asked a young guy on that train what was happening. He repeated what the conductor had said (see above, c) and then patiently answered the same question from a woman two seconds behind me. No one argued, people shared the Look of Whaddayagunnado, and a resigned sense of being "in it together" reigned. Most went back to their newspapers. I felt proud of our little community of unflappable, civil riders.
Then the godlike PA spoke again, reiterating message (b). Suddenly I realized that there was another train station, on a different line, a mere half-block away. That train would get me to work just as easily. Would it be overloaded with refugees from this benighted line? Few people were at this point leaving, choosing instead to believe the orders would change again and the train would resume its journey -- and who wanted to head out into the punishing heat? But this car was getting warmer by the minute, sitting with the doors open.
Impulse took hold; I dashed out and up the stairs and ran the infernal seventy-five yards or so down Flatbush; bolted into the other station to the sound of a Manhattan-bound 4 train arriving, and made it, drenched and gasping into an almost empty car, the doors snapping shut behind me, a mere five minutes after leaving my well-beloved Q train riders. My thought about them in that moment: Suckers! See ya!
Postscript: Had I wanted to call into work to tell them I was running late, I would have had only a two-thirds chance of finding a working phone. Maybe if Verizon would stop paying that smug "Test Man" character to ride around on a donkey, they could get him working on fixing some of the phones in the subways.
Posted by BT at August 14, 2002 02:29 PM