Thank You, New Jersey Transit

A friend asked me the other day what brought about the sudden burst of posts on my blog, when during the semester, posts were so few a far between.

The answer is simple: I HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO WRITE ABOUT NOW!

Clearly the bar exam has provided me with ample agression, and the blog is a means to vent it, but there's another force more powerful than the bar, that has provided me with countless observations of human depravity and stupidity: New Jersey Transit.

Simply put, riding public transportation for two hours a day each way and looking for something funny to write about is a lot like wiping your ass... you're always gonna find something.

On the subject of bathroom habits and public transportation, here's a great example of the hilarity with which NJT has provided me - and my only regret about this story is that it happened with so much time left in the summer, so nothing I observe for the rest of the summer can ever top it: Last night after the fake bar I got on a rush hour train home. I turned down drinks with my friends so I could sit in a crowded train, return to New Brunswick, and drive my '93 Dodge Caravan with no air conditioning home to Belle Mead amidst rush hour commuter traffic and the early-Friday-night-Rutgers-University-drinking-pedestrian traffic. And it was totally worth it. As soon as the train started moving, some crazy with a capital "CRAZY" lady comes stumbling thru the vestibule yelling completely incoherently, carrying about 8 big ass trash bags of stuff. She's bumping in to everybody, cursing, and mumbling. She gets up to the conductor and starts yelling at him...

(brace yourself for this)

(ready?)

(are you sure?)

..that she peed her pants trying to make the train.

Go ahead and read that sentence again, 'cause this story is only beginning to be obscene.

Not content to tell him that she peed her pants, she proceeded to prove it to him. Without putting her bags down, she swung one arm around in front of her, grabbed the inside of her right pant leg with her right hand, lifted the leg, and swung it outside to her right, to show him the pee that had run down her leg... all the while swaying back and forth, fighting the weight of the bags on each side of her and the mild turbulence of the train, to maintain her balance on just one semi-dry leg.

And let me tell you, I've been on an AmTrack train when the train breaks down and people start acting up... and AmTrack's crew sucks at handling even the smallest of crises. If I ever ordered an drink on an AmTrack train, and they brought me someone else's drink by accident, I'd be afraid that sending it back might somehow derail the train. If I'm ever on a train that's involved in an accident, I hope it's on a NJTransit train 'cause the conductor kept a straight face thru the whole thing.

"Well what would you like me to do do for you," he politely and softly asked, without even emphasizing the "me" to make the question rhetorical and sarcastic, and even maintaining eye contact with her while he continued punching tickets for the passengers who had not peed their pants.

"Nothing," she shouted at him. "I just want you to know because you, an'dis train are gonna be hearin' from my docta and my loya and my huzbin."

So she stormed past him, thru the vestibule, into the next car, and out of my life forever.

And the second the door shut behind her the the whole car just erupted in laughter. To walk into our train car in the middle of it, you'd have thought that we all knew each other... like the best man just toasted the groom, and we were all laughing about the "college days story." The conductor almost passed out from laughing so hard. He may have been holding his breath just to keep from laughing during the whole transaction with her... or it may have been because of the pee, I can't really say.

But in any event, thank you, New Jersey Transit.

More to come...