The Dumpster dive of a lifetime

I'm sure by now most people have heard of Wesley Autrey, the death-defying New Yorker who jumped onto the tracks to save an NYU film student who had fallen on them during a seizure, covering the convulsing kid as the train rolled over them.

There's a little icing to this heroism that I don't think has been pointed out yet, however.

For those not familiar with the New York subways, let me tell you a little something about the subway tracks: They are absolutely disgusting. Tourists and New Yorkers alike use them as their garbage cans, throwing all sorts of wrappers, food, gum, broken glass and assorted filth into them. Stagnant rainwater stands there for weeks. Rats creep between the rails. Bums and drunken East Village partygoers urinate onto them. And the smell on a hot summer day could knock down a linebacker.

The 137th street station, where the incident occurred, is not one of the busier stations tourist-wise, so it wouldn't be as bad as some, but that also means the crews would be paying less attention to it. In other words, we're talking several months of refuse, piss and vermin potpourri.

So I can only imagine what the experience of being pinned to that sort of topography beneath several tons of metal would be like. I would think it's something like crawling into the trash bin behind a Burger King with a family of possums and then having someone beat it with a wrecking ball. Minus the whole possibility of death thing, of course.

Sometimes the word hero is just not sufficient.