Entries Tagged 'traffic and weather reports' ↓

And then there was the huge cement mixer I saw twirling its cement down Queens Boulevard last week. It was white with enormous magenta, kelly, midnight, and red polka dots.

Like a dream.

Story number one:

So on Sunday I was waiting for the 7 train to Manhattan, and a woman and a man in their late 20s or early 30s came on to my platform. They were talking loudly in that confident way people do when life is pretty good. And she was giving him what one suspected might be a little well-deserved trouble: he said something she said something he said something and then she said, even more loudly, and in a very skeptical tone,

“Are you sure you aren’t sleeping with anybody else?”

He did some protesting, and then said, even more loudly,

“Alright, alright. Is everybody here? (looking around at those on my elevated platform and the one opposite). Okay. (He steps back away from her bench, to the edge of the platform.) Everybody needs to hear this. I love this woman. I say I love this woman. Did everybody get that? What more do you need, woman?”

At this point, everyone is laughing, and the dorky middle aged white guy across the platform, and dorky me, are clapping. He apologizes to us for the disturbance (nobody minded), and she is laughing.

It was a nice wee spectacle, but you know what? I thought afterwards that the same sentiment expressed another way might be more convincing. He never answered the question. Instead, he distracted her away from it. Instead of a nice little Valentine’s tableaux, I was left wondering if I’d seen a player getting away with something. But you know, that chick was so skeptical, I know she’ll be alright.

Story number two:

Tonight I was on the 7 again, but going in the opposite direction. Another woman who I don’t know and I were crammed in above a sitting woman, who was shuffling papers in a folder, including a local community college’s schedule. She settled in quickly to what was probably algebra homework due tonight, since she was heading in the direction of the community college in question.

The other woman and I were glancing down at her algebra work, and we smiled at each other, smiled at her, and she smiled back. I saw some problems I could remember how to do, and then some I would have had to work at, if this were the GRE all over again.

And then, as the sitting woman worked, the other standing woman leaned down and started giving her tips. She must have seen her make an error, because she pointed at the different parts of the equation (you know, all those parenthetical sets) and showed her something like “multiply this one by that one, then this one by that one, then add these” sort of thing.

The sitting woman was lit up with recognition for a moment, and then worked through the problem a little more enthusiastically. I couldn’t hear the advice she was getting, but the standing woman showed her a few more moves, explained a few more things, and then saig goodbye and jumped off the train and hurried down the platform.

You sometimes get these impromptu conversations on the subway, when someone has the same unusual bag as someone else, or when Michael Jackson’s noseless on the front of some paper and someone makes a snide joke which elicits more from another. (Not for nothing–I am not in the habit of mocking the noseless, but Jacko is a bit of an easy target.)

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone spontaneously tutor a stranger on the subway before. And the unsolicited tips were given so kindly and swiftly, and received so appreciatively, it was really something beautiful to behold.

There’s a new idea: set up a tutoring car on the subway. It may sound nutty, but then I read about 3-4 months ago about a local teacher who had set up a tutoring and read-to-me program for kids in an inner city laundromat. She did it because she saw kids spacing out, running wild, and playing expensive video games while their moms were occupied and tired. And she offered to read a kid a story and the kid loved it. She got a corner and a pile of books and read to kids, who were mesmerized.

Now several more stores in the chain have invited her to organize tutoring / reading there too. She’s got storybooks and now student teachers from Brooklyn College to help her at each laundromat. Each one teach one.

Daily report:
It’s cold and I feel old.
Weekly forecast:
Today I saw Canada Geese flying south by the river. No more warm weather for us.