PERSONAL Summer Daze
I almost got hit by a cab this morning. I'm not sure what woke me out of my daze first, the car's horn or the sliding sound of its tires breaking hard on wet cement... but it took me a couple seconds to realize that I had just almost been hit by a cab. What happened? Let's go back to the beginning...
This morning Chelsey and I woke up at 6:15. Today is her first day of work, and we wanted to make sure she got there on time (read: early). We left her apartment at 7:10... and got to the L in about fifteen minutes. At the Damon stop (simply five stops from the beginning of the line), all the seats on the train had already been taken, so Chelsey and I stood in the doorway. After five stops of seeing more and more people cram themselves into the doorway near us, wondering how we were all going to fit at each stop, we stopped at Belmont. Belmont is where people can first transfer from Red to Brown Lines or vice versa. Almost everyone standing left to transfer to the Red Line, then even MORE people got on to our car. Chelsey and I went from standing next to each other, to standing about four feet away, unable to see each other. And because of this, or because of the woman with the backpack pinning my arm back against the glass making it go numb, or because I kept hitting my hat on the tall man's arm in front of me, or because the woman next to me kept sliding her foot into mine, somewhere in between Armitage and Sedgwick I had a severe panic attack. I felt like I couldn't breathe, and I wanted to shove some of the people right off the train... or (the thought crossed my mind) to jump off the moving train myself.
And through all that, I thought of Chelsey. She has to make this trip every day. But you'll never hear her complain. You'll NEVER hear her complain. That's why she has me: I'll complain for her. It's a horrible way to go to work. Perhaps there were more people today because of the rain, but I have a feeling she'll be surrounded by idiot Chicago yuppies on her way to work every day.
My mind wandered and wondered and it seemed like an eternity before we were stopped at Washington and Wells, getting off the train to head to her building. We arrived a full half an hour early... causing me to wonder if we could have left ten or fifteen minutes later perhaps we could have avoided some of the morning L traffic. I was thinking about Chelsey's first day and how nervous I would be if it was me; where I could meet her for lunch, if she gets a full lunch hour; how frightened I was in retrospect at the panic attack that clouded my mind; and, before I knew it, a cab was honking at me and skidding to a stop in the middle of an intersection.