You never know who you will meet. . .
. . .on an internet message board.
Yesterday's blog post was inspired, in part, by something that happened last week.
Wednesday morning I was in the 34th St. Station, waiting for the downtown "E" train. This is a fairly large and busy station, with separate tracks and platforms for local and express trains, and it services the commuters who come into the city via LIRR or NJ Transit.
As I said, I was waiting for a downtown train, when all of a sudden there was a commotion on the uptown "E" platform. People were running and screaming.
Part of me wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, but another part of me wanted to stay and find out what caused the commotion.
Then my train came, and I decided discretion is the better part of valor. I got on the train.
There was no indication that the transit authority suspended service on the line and no media soundbite about an incident on the subway. So I figured it couldn't have been anything serious.
So I posted about it on one of the message boards I like to visit.
And the next day another board member told me "The screaming freaked me out too. Be glad you didn't see what happened. A woman was standing on the tracks just as the uptown train was pulling into the station. Fortunately the train was able to stop in time. And two men climbed down to get her and bring her up to the platform. It was horrible. Be glad you didn't see it."
When she posted this, I realized that yes, the uptown train had stopped just outside the station. I'd looked out the window of the downtown train as we were leaving, but I hadn't placed any significance on the location of the uptown train . . .
That is, until I'd met a fellow commuter on an internet message board.
Yesterday's blog post was inspired, in part, by something that happened last week.
Wednesday morning I was in the 34th St. Station, waiting for the downtown "E" train. This is a fairly large and busy station, with separate tracks and platforms for local and express trains, and it services the commuters who come into the city via LIRR or NJ Transit.
As I said, I was waiting for a downtown train, when all of a sudden there was a commotion on the uptown "E" platform. People were running and screaming.
Part of me wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, but another part of me wanted to stay and find out what caused the commotion.
Then my train came, and I decided discretion is the better part of valor. I got on the train.
There was no indication that the transit authority suspended service on the line and no media soundbite about an incident on the subway. So I figured it couldn't have been anything serious.
So I posted about it on one of the message boards I like to visit.
And the next day another board member told me "The screaming freaked me out too. Be glad you didn't see what happened. A woman was standing on the tracks just as the uptown train was pulling into the station. Fortunately the train was able to stop in time. And two men climbed down to get her and bring her up to the platform. It was horrible. Be glad you didn't see it."
When she posted this, I realized that yes, the uptown train had stopped just outside the station. I'd looked out the window of the downtown train as we were leaving, but I hadn't placed any significance on the location of the uptown train . . .
That is, until I'd met a fellow commuter on an internet message board.
Comments
Post a Comment