Stuck On The Subway

Y’all know what a subway is, right? The train that runs underground and causes a big gust of wind when it pulls into the station. Yeah, that. Not the sandwich place. I was not stuck on a sandwich. Get your mind out of the bun.

As the title of this post suggests, I was stuck on a subway. Yesterday at 9:30pm, to be precise.

I was coming home from a lacrosse game downtown, when all of a sudden it happened. The train stopped. The lights went out. The robotic voice came over the speaker system.

“We have lost power.” We what?

I exchanged a look of raised eyebrows with the lady next to me. Her eyebrows went higher than mine. I guess she was more surprised.

Panic immediately set in.

I thought, this is how I die. On a subway, underground, with no phone reception, no food, no washroom, and no idea if Looney June will be a success. Yes, this is what I thought about.

I started to sweat. The people around me started to sweat. A man ran back and forth, frantically waving his arms. The power was out, the lights were off, and the air conditioning was gone. I was in a crowded sweat box with people who smelled like last week.

How long are we going to be here? Who will save us? Where’s Ronald McDonald when you need him?

All valid questions.

Then my survivor instincts started to kick in. If we’re going to be here a while, we’re going to need food. I need to find the people who have food and become their friend. Because if someone asks for everyone to pool all the food together into one pile, no one will go for it.

Survival of the fittest, kids.

I scouted out people with large bags and told myself that in one hour I would get up and go sit next to them. Any sooner and they’d know I wanted more than to just “keep them company.”

I was also wondering when would be a good time to talk about the washroom situation. It amazes me that there isn’t a washroom on the subway. We are underground. That is basically the same thing as being up in the sky on an airplane. Airplanes have washrooms.

Within three hours we would have to address the issue. We would have to designate some sort of “relief corner” at one end of the train.

Now, this subway was one of the new ones. Which means it was just one long train. You could walk from one end to the other. It wasn’t divided into different cars. (I think that’s the term.)

Perhaps someone would give up their backpack so we could use it as a toilet. All for one, one for Paul all, right?

I was running through all of these thoughts in my head, while others were probably doing the same thing. We needed a leader. This was the subway apocalypse. We needed a leader to lay down the law.

A subtatorship, if you will.

As the minutes ticked by, we were still without power. With every passing second, my plan to move next to people with food was getting closer to fruition.

And then it happened. The lights turned back on. No one cheered. I think most of us thought it was the light you see when you’re about to die. Talk about anti-climactic.

Then God the robot voice came on the speaker: We have restored power.

We were saved.

I didn’t have to pretend to be nice to strangers, just to get three crackers from them.

We didn’t have to create a “relief corner” or sacrifice someone’s backpack.

The lady beside me could finally put her eyebrows down. At ease, soldier!

Everything was going to be okay.

Alright, so I may have over-exaggerated everything. However, almost all of these thoughts did run through my mind, initially! I guess I watch too many TV shows. 

In reality, the train was stuck for ten minutes. We were parked at a station. The doors were open, half the lights were on, but eyebrows were still raised. I put earbuds in and listened to music because I’m a millennial, while the older people around me stared at me, thinking I was asleep because I was looking down at the songs on my iPod. True story.

Not even a day has gone by and I’ve already overblown this story. I can only imagine how I’ll tell this story in 25 years.