The Time I Conquered NYC Public Transportation

Being from Enfield, CT, the only form of public transportation we have is no public transportation at all. Now, I’m not a complete foreigner to Public Transportation, I’ve been on a Duck Boat before (shout out Boston), however, that’s about the extent of my list. So picture this, a 21 year old girl all hyped up on love and life, taking on the Big Apple with her three best friends to go support those super fit and way better at life, NYC marathon runners. If you think you know where this story is going, I promise you, you don’t.

On the morning of November 1, 2015 myself and three of my best friends hopped in the car, my favorite form of transportation, and took ourselves to get some Starbucks. If I was gonna be elbow knocking with a bunch of strangers for the next twelve hours, I was damn well gonna need to be caffeinated. Upon getting our trendy Starbucks drinks, we did the next thing all trendy New Yorkers love to do. We “took the train into the City”-I can picture Maggie saying it as I type it. I sat in my seat for the next 30 minutes and watched the sunrise over the city as we rode along, parallel to the Hudson. I could do the train, I was good at the train. I remember thinking “this isn’t so bad! I could totally ‘New York’.” If you’re asking yourself if I just used New York as a verb, I totally did. What you people do on the daily to get to and from work is an absolute sport and you all kill the game. For real, this shit is like U8 soccer and you’re all taking home a participation trophy.

Any who, here I am, finally getting of the train with my three best gals, feeling like an absolute queen. See, what I haven’t mentioned yet is my unwavering fear of large crowds and the feeling of being trapped-there was no way in hell that you people could have prepared me for what I was about to experience in just a few short minutes. Satan’s Tunnel, or what some call “The Subway,” has got to be the home of where the most Xanax are popped. Let me tell you, bless the souls of my friends who got me on and off that thing in one piece because I was about to really “New York” on someone’s ass. (Here I choose to not refer to New York as a Verb, but rather refer to New York from Flavor of Love spitting on Pumpkin circa 2006). It wasn’t my proudest moment, but let me tell you, I did it.

Once we got off the Subway and finished our commute to where we planned to watch the marathon, I felt amazing. Shit, I felt like I had just ran the whole 26.2 with the way my adrenaline was pumping. The next four hours were filled with inspiring moments, encouraging chants, and me obviously crying at how moved I was by these incredible athletes. I was so glad that I had conquered my fear of crowds in order to witness individuals achieve such levels of happiness. That’s before I knew what the commute home was going to consist of.

We got back on the Subway to begin our commute home, and honestly, I was doing alright. It wasn’t too crowded and hey, I was a pro at this now! That was until Maggie looked at me and said “I don’t feel too good”-your girl instantly went into mom mode, rifling through my bag in search of a bottle of water, tums, band aids, and ibuprofen, like they were just going to appear out of thin air. While I was rifling through my oversized and overpriced bag that every female seems to have for no apparent reason-side note, there ain’t no need for us to carry around mini hair straighteners in our bags ladies, yet we do it because we have the room. Any who, there I was, rifling through bobby pins and other unnecessary shit, so indulged in the BAG, that I failed to look up and see Maggie slowly descending to the floor of the freaken moving subway. Literally down the bitch went. I remember grabbing her head and telling her to ‘LOOK INTO MY EYES” as if they were magically going to keep her from passing out on this germ infested floor.

Within a matter of seconds, she had blacked out, passed out, and knocked the fuck out. Suddenly I go from mom mode to Meredith fucking Grey mode, this girl needs a snack and she needs it now. My other two friends, Christie and Paige (that’s right I have another friend named Paige) start asking these random ass humans for snacks that we can shove down our unconscious friend’s throat. What seemed like over a hundred people on this subway and I shit you not, not a single soul had a snack. All except for this one woman, an angel from heaven, who offered up her freaken gourmet cupcake to save the day. Seriously this thing had to be like $10 easy with all the sprinkles and Oreo pieces on it. This bad boy would have brought Maggie back to life as a new woman if she weren’t GLUTEN FREE.

So here we are, three girls standing around our unconscious friend, having absolutely no idea what to do. Meanwhile, I manage to realize that our stop is coming up and conscious or not, we are getting off of this terrible thing. Somehow, by the grace of God, Maggie looks up at the three of us and just stands up. We wait a few seconds for our stop and walk off the subway like nothing happened. We’re walking to the stairs when BOOM, down she goes again. Guys, on some real shit, I could not even believe this nonsense was happening. Christie, Paige, and I scooped her up with our super human noodle arms and Ray Riced her ass straight into the nearest elevator….where she passed out again. Y’all I wish I was making this shit up.

We finally got her out of the elevator and sat her down on the floor of the grody ass subway station. We sat here for about 20 minutes eating Cheetos, drinking blue Gatorade, and recapping Maggie on the scene that she just made. What blew my mind the most about each of the scenarios that just played out, was that not a single person flinched. No one stopped going about their daily lives for a second-as if it were normal for a human to be laying in the middle of the floor. This day taught me several things, the first being that the city is not meant for a girl who walks around with more Xanax than money in her pockets. I learned that people are primarily only concerned with what is going on in their own lives, so we should worry less about what people think about us. I learned to never let Maggie go more than four hours without nourishing herself, primarily because my muscles hurt for a week from having to lift her lifeless body. Last, I learned that the public transportation life is not for me but if I have to face it, I’d rather do it with the people that I love.