ManicDDaily

Late late late.  What is it that makes some people (i.e. me) almost inevitably so?

It can’t be enjoyment of that sick feeling in my stomach, the itchy anxiety that runs up the inside of my arms, the vacuum roar in my throat.

I jump on the first train I come to, an E, even though it doesn’t go exactly to the stop I need.   Then, at the next stop, a C—a C!— a local, but also the train that will stop at my station— pulls up across the platform.

I dash across.  I make it through the old grey doors.  I even get a seat.

As the E speeds off on the other track, the conductor of my C tells us that the train is being held in the station.   We wait.  He tells us again, just in case we don’t realize that we are standing stock still.  The vacuum roar spreads from my throat to my solar plexus; despair fills my core.  My little bit of lateness will now be a lot of lateness, and it is all my fault.  Stupid stupid C.

The train finally begins to move, but slowly, jerkily, like a Conestoga wagon over a rutted ditch.  The scene is somewhat different from the classic Western, however, due to the blackness outside the train and the gloomy fluorescence within.  What I should say is that the train moves like a Conestoga wagon somehow transplanted into a cheap diner at 2 a.m.

I feel horrible.  Yet, the despair caused by lateness is something with which I am well familiar.  Why?

1.         I tell myself it’s because I am busy.  (But most people in this city are busy.)

2.         I tell myself it’s because I can’t refrain from certain morning conversations, which, though irrelevant to the specific tasks of the day, are necessarily required for the construction of a “self” to get through these tasks.   This doesn’t seem a good reason either since a certain share of these conversations are arguments, which (I hope) are not actually the building blocks of that sense of self.  (I try not to wonder about that.)

3.         I tell myself it’s because I don’t much like waiting.  As a child of another overly busy woman who spent time in conversations aimed at bolstering the self in order to get through hard days, I did a fair amount of waiting when I was little.   (The only problem with that reason is that  I’m generally gleeful when early.)

4.         Perfectionism?   (Maybe.  I do tend to sweep my living room just when I should walk out the door.)

5.         Reluctance?  (On certain work days, possibly.)

6.        A need for specialness?  A desire to prove that I’m lucky, blessed with extraordinary gifts of good fortune, such as clocks stopping, trains taking wing?  (Hmmm…..)

Finally (finally), we pull into 42^nd Street which is the station where I would have had to switch from the so much faster E, had I stayed on.  The platform is crowded.

Ah.

If you are a New Yorker, you understand the reason behind that “ah”.

If you’re not:  the full platform means that no other C has pulled up here recently;  that, even if I’d stayed on the grass-is-always-greener other train (the E, or even if I’d jumped the express, the A), I would not have caught up to a C train before the one I am sitting on.

Which means that I have, today, taken the very quickest combination of trains available on the New York City subway system.

Ah.

I run when I get off, feeling blessed.