Stories (DOG EAR)
Stories (DOG EAR)
love stories. Stories determine our past, present and future. The world is a web of stories.
So there I am on a sleepy suburban rail platform (story) with my Brompton folding bike (ongoing story) with my NYC subway map t-shirt (old story).
To this story, let’s add the Sunrail ambassador and make a new story.
She’s the lady who helps you to buy your tickets and not tumble onto the tracks (explanative story). And she’s crazy and vibrant and more animated than a Disney flick (background story). So she comes over and points to a spot on my chest-map, up about Lexington Ave, maybe towards Queens. And that, she tells me, is where she was born.
Years back, her mom was out shopping and was coming home on the subway and her water broke. Somehow she got word to her husband that their daughter was on the way. She made it to the hospital, met her husband in the hall, and suddenly our feisty, two-fisted, can-do, no nonsense Sunrail ambassador was pushing into the world. Out popped her little pink head. Her dad (a man I want at my back in a crisis) caught her as she ejected, right there in the hospital hall.
I mean, blood on the linoleum, a spool of umbilical cord and then the cry of a new life. What a story.
That’s why I like riding the train. I talked to another ambassador about her purse collection. And the bus-link driver about recently snagging a winning lottery ticket. I even had someone on the bus tell me that a friend of hers was bitten by a rattlesnake, incurred $25,000 dollars of medical bills but her insurance claim was denied as an “Act of God”.
That’s why I’m perplexed by all the phone users I see. Nothing can compete with talking with other people. The stories you get might be long-winded or boring, but they could be crazy and unique and special. And I’m willing to take that chance.
Just say hello. Then listen.