Finding Happiness in the Subway
Like many New Yorker I ride the subway to work every day, usually at the same time. The subway is crowded, noisy and hardly the place to meet anyone. We straphangers, as we are known, usually stand there (seats are rare) half asleep just waiting to reach our stop. Each train has many cars, and a sea of people traveling in them. You may take the same train every day but be in a different car or at another end of the same car. If you see someone once on the train chances are you may never see them again.
So you can imagine my surprise when someone I’d never seen before approached me to ask if I went to Taft High School with him. I did go to Taft, but had no recollection of him. He mentioned people I had long forgot about and told me he had a major crush on me in High School but was too shy to ask me out. He said when he saw me on the train a few weeks ago he made up his mind then and there that he would ask me out. Even though he didn’t usually take that train, he kept riding it in the hopes that he’d run into me again.
I had a nasty divorce and had become leery of most men, but we laughed so much talking about things that had happened back in High School that when he asked me to dinner, against all my rules I accepted. That dinner turned into a long-term relationship and then marriage. I’m glad I was on that train and that he had the fortitude to keep riding the rails to find me.
Mary McCormick
New York, NY
