My mission:impossible game isn't any better in the summertime, by the way- I'm sure you were wondering when I was going to get back to you on that. Honestly I haven't been really looking- and I think the people on the Cambridge public transit aren't that interesting.
I suspect if I was still in Portland there would be plenty of people mission:impossibling their way around town. Once I saw very round ecstatic man pushing a wheelchair down St John's street. He was wearing what looked like a wrestling cape and a cowboy hat. I think he'd encountered a pot hole in the sidewalk just as I discovered him, which may have been why his walk appeared so jaunty. There was a big trash bag sitting in the wheelchair, full. If that isn't deserving of a mission:impossible theme I don't know what is.
I was in a car at the time, the person driving also saw him. He was real.
I encountered someone on the MBTA a few days ago- interacted with them. "Met" isn't really the right word. We interacted.
I had just made myself unique among the commuters, you see, and when you do things like this apparently it makes you more approachable.. just sos you know.
Here's how I did it:
It's no secret among those who practice "small talk" that it's been science-fiction hot out (I stole that term, but I don't remember from where) over the last four or five days. When I'd made my way into the stone-and-mold guts of the subway I found a woman sitting hunched over on one of the benches. I thought she was a yoga-person stretching out or something. She wasn't.
I didn't know what was wrong with her, but I figured the right thing to do was to try to find out and maybe be of some use. I couldn't get any information from her directly as she wasn't awake/conscious but looked deceptively well put together for someone passed out in the train station. I asked her a few times if she was alright, soft then loud, if she needed some water etc..When she finally unfolded herself, it was to sway and mumble that she was fine.
I know what alcohol looks like, what a few other drugs look like.. sort of what going-to-pass-out looks like.. I don't actually know what about-to-cry looks like.. her face was a kind of shifting mosaic of a number of these things. Among others, I'm sure.
I looked up and saw a bunch of people trying not to look at what was going on. I grilled an older gentleman for a bit to see if I could get him to get some water or someone more authorized to deal with this lady. He was nice enough to point towards the office where I could find such authorized types.
Cool.
So I got up and went over to find a T-person to help the lady out. Found about five of them hanging out in their little air conditioned box. When I began to tell them about the lady they all had a good laugh and sent one of their number out with me. He took his damned time getting out of his chair, strolled along behind me saying something about the woman having been there for a while etc.. swaggering, knees bowing in between veed-out feet and flopping arms, leaning back to accommodate a lifetime of empty calories and inactivity.
Fear not, fair Maiden! For I have journeyed a-far and returned hence with the finest the Commonwealth has to offer! Hip Hip!
He proceeded to dismiss me from my post as the woman's watcher, and went full bore into his rescue plan.. which, as far as I could tell, consisted of hassling the lady about when she was going to leave and reminding her that she'd been there for a few hours. I started to feel bad about not just getting her some water myself.
Here's where my helping this lady out made me more approachable:
I went back to waiting for the train which is when I became engaged in conversation with a guy who said he'd been watching the whole thing but, you know, more from, like, a social experiment point of view, because, you know, no one was doing anything, and it was, like, interesting to see how long that was going to go on. He asked me if I'd missed a train trying to help her. I hadn't, but I said I wouldn't have minded if I had. Because Jesus.
I didn't try very hard to hide my disgust. I think he was trying to seem interesting- some how above it all. We had a brief conversation during which I didn't actually say that he's part of the problem- this whole epidemic of people thinking someone else will take care of things. Not out loud anyway. I sat across from him on the train and we had broken conversation about homeless people and how they are often misdiagnosed as drunk instead of having a diabetic.. reaction or something. He did most of the talking.. I asked if he was in medicine.. he said his parents were but he'd messed himself up enough to know these things.
I indirectly watched him pull a tomato out of his bag and eat it like an apple.
Then I went home.
You know what isn't fun? Getting food poisoning on a plane.
Dear People in the Airport Bathroom Who Commented on the Noise of my Prolonged Vomiting,
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Did anyone else Aldoux Huxley on the 10th? Is that something that happens? Something people do?
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