'Welcome to New York, bitch!'

My morning commute usually takes me 45 minutes door-to-door. This morning, it took me and hour and a half, and I owe it all to tourists.

Getting to work most mornings involves about 20 minutes of walking and one 25-minute train ride on the A express train. This morning, however, the A train stalled shortly into the ride, and the ever-helpful conductor told us that because of a medical emergency on the train ahead of us, that we should move across the platform to the C local train.

Taking a local train is bit slower, but only by 10 minutes or so, so I wasn't too concerned. At least I wasn't until the C train also stalled because of some unknown incident at the 72nd Street station (one of the coolest looking stations in New York, by the way), and I got to watch the A train I had abandoned zip past me as we waited.

When I finally got to the Columbus Circle station, I saw a D express train across the platform and ran to it, thinking it would save me a few minutes on the remaining ride. This proved to be my biggest mistake.

After we left the stop before mine, a tourist apparantly whacked a native New York with her stroller and told her to move. This escalated into a fight, and some genius--I'm assuming another tourist--decided to pull the emergency brake. In the middle of a tunnel. This, of course, nearly started another fight, as everyone descended on the fool who pulled the break. The native New Yorker, by this time, was in a horrendous rage, kicking the tourist's stroller and shouting, "Welcome to New York, bitch!" Thank goodness for the isolating bubble of the iPod.

It took about 30 minutes to get moving again. When we finally got to the station, I saw the tourist whining to police about how the other woman had hit her. The other woman, meanwhile, had calmed down thanks to a prim, older woman who had sat down and talked with her. I don't know what the older woman said, but we should get her to straighten out that whole North Korea thing next.

There are some lessons here, tourists. First of all, if you whack somebody with your stroller, apologize or just move on. More importantly, however, never pull the emergency brake on a subway. For one thing, an emergency would be something like a heart attack or a stabbing, not two women fighting. If that makes you uncomfortable, just move to another car. But even if it's a real emergency, you never pull the freaking cord in the middle of a tunnel. Pull it when you get to a station, where there actually are people who can do something about the situation.

There was a lesson for me as well. The irony was that I had left home early this morning in an effort to get a jump start on work this week. Had I left at my regularly last-minute time, I actually would have made it to work on time. It's the last time I ever try efficiency.