16/ Scary Stuff on the Subway

I admit the following is an edited excerpt from a blog post I wrote in 2014. It fits the topic of “scary stuff,” but the blog tells the rest of the story.

I was 19 years old, and commuting to work from Queens to Rockefeller Center. Rush hour on the NYC subways is not for the claustrophobic or overly sensitive. We had our choice of holding onto one of the handles above the seats or grabbing a pole. Envision multiple hands holding onto the same shiny white pole. I guess we chose our spot on the pole depending on our height. Like a lot of riders, I always had a book with me. One hand holding the book, the other clutching the pole.

You can't exactly minimize contact with the other riders, but you do what you can to not maximize it. Which was why it came as a shock that morning when a guy in back of me pushed me into the pole and yelled that I was leaning on him. Leaning on him? I turned around and he kept yelling, in Spanish now (I recognized puta). And then he ripped the pearls from my neck.