Apr
21
Let’s see. It was a Thursday night around eight o’clock. I had just jumped on the brown line after working for 12 hours. And tired is an understatement.
No one was very talkative on the train. At least it’s late enough that I can get a seat, I found myself thinking. And as we glided and bounced along, the easy silence was broken by a rambunctious man entering the car with his friend.
His level of talking was more like shouting. He was dressed in dirty, ragged jeans and looked down on his luck. He was wiping his nose and kept his head bent over his body, as he moved through the car in exaggerated steps. He was screaming jovially about this and that, shooting jokes back and forth with his friend.
Then I noticed an odd smell had come over the train. It smelled like someone had just peeled a hard-boiled egg. Not pleasant. But not foul.
“Somebody just stank on this train!” shouted the man making all the clamor, his voice even more strident than before.
He was standing, and then doubled over laughing. “Somebody stank on this train!”
All the other well-dressed, weary faces on the train remained motionless. No one made eye contact with him, no one cracked a smile. No one even acknowledged the loud man’s presence.
Minutes passed. The man kept shouting, “Somebody stank on this train! Ya’ll don’t smell that?” He and his buddy were in fits of laughter.
Then a blond woman sitting next to me, who had been casually talking on her cell phone, spoke softly into the receiver, “You can hear him?” She glanced at me, laughter in her eyes. “My sister is cracking up. She can hear him…it does kind of smell funny I guess.”
I could hear her sister losing it on the other end of the phone. Then the woman next to me began laughing.
I started to smile. Within seconds, everyone on the train was cracking up. Every single person was smiling at each other and laughing.
“I’m getting outta here!” shouted the loud man. “Somebody stank on this train! I can’t stand it!” he said as he made an abrupt motion for the door that led to the next car.
Then he was gone.
And everyone was still laughing their guts out.
Funny what can put a smile on your face at the end of a long day. But it appears that no one could have given weary commuters a better gift than to stank on that train.