Day Three- I Was Kicked by an Old Man with a Cane

I was once kicked by an old man with a cane. I admit that this attack by a senior citizen was not completely unprovoked and while I maintain my innocence, I might have ever so gently nudged him with the business end of my umbrella. Even so, a slight poke with a rain stick is hardly worthy of inciting the overly aggressive kicking maneuver this senior pulled. 

It happened a couple of years ago on the 6 train in Manhattan. Anyone who has ever taken mass transit regularly will understand the kind of frustration a crowded commute can invoke and those familiar with the NYC subway system will know that the green line on the east side of the city is particularly egregious. The main problem with the 4, 5, and 6 trains or the "green line" is that it is the only train line that runs down the east side of the island to serve twice as many people. It is not uncommon to watch three trains pass by before you can actually fit onto one due to the overcrowding. Once inside, you are indelicately shoved within breath freshener range of strangers. I jokingly refer to it as the morning grope, because you stand flush against other riders on all sides while you bump and weave with the train. It's akin to being felt up by a first date, but without the accompanying guilt.

Because this train runs straight down to the financial district, you have a disproportionate number of grumpy, hurried professionals, with briefcases and already sweat-dampened suits squeezing into what is essentially a tiny compact hallway on rails. Occasionally on these rides with 100 of your newest, closest friends, a scuffle will break out. In my case, I was inadvertently bumping up against an elderly gentleman standing directly behind me. Clearly someone should have offered this fellow a seat, but there are no stingier subway riders than the businessmen who feel entitled to a seat, while the rest of the train is left to stand, huddled together like the poor masses begging for a farthing. These are also the same jokers who will self-importantly prop their briefcase on their lap as they spread their legs just enough to keep anyone else from utilizing the space on the bench beside them, only to take out a copy not of the Financial Times, but of the latest Harry Potter book. Now I don't need one more person (including my brilliant husband) to tell me how well-written these Potter books are, the bottom line is that if you're over the age of fourteen, in an expensive suit, and on your way to Wall Street, maybe Harry Potter shouldn't be a part of your self-righteous morning ritual.

At some point during the on and off reshuffling of passengers this older man and I sort of stumbled into one another and my leg accidentally got entangled with his cane, possibly knocking him off balance. I can only assume that to him this transgression represented a personal attack. Perhaps to him I was an ageist and I was calling him out for riding with morning commuters, making it abundantly clear this doddering geezer was no longer among my working brethren? I can only guess at his mindset, but what happened next was that he snatched his cane away nearly knocking me down in the process. He accompanied this discreet move with a profanity that sounded a lot like “dumb, bitch-whore.” I was greeted with this delightful moniker just as I was turning to apologize to him, but before I could get out “I’m sorry” he also elbowed me in the side. 

The responsible, civically minded thing to do in such a situation would be to chalk this up to morning grumpiness or even senility, but I decided he had a personal vendetta against me and the logical next step would be to antagonize him further. So I kind of smacked him in the leg with my umbrella. It wasn’t a hard hit, I wasn’t trying to take him out of the game or anything, I just felt it necessary to advise him, via my gentle leg tap, that further abuse on his behalf would not be tolerated. Also, at some point you have to stop hiding behind your possible senility and senior angst and be responsible for your own behavior, right? This gentleman clearly was failing at proper social behavior and why should I suffer? After all, I had a job to get to and it was Monday on a steaming hot July morning. The dampness of the morning rain perfectly matched the 95% humidity of the day, creating a sticky, unbearably oppressive soup-like atmosphere. So I don’t know about you, but when it’s hot, humid, smelly and 7:30am I am not in a mood to be generous. This geezer better watch whom he’s calling a dumb, bitch-whore!

Over the last few years I have thought about what happened next with alternate bouts of shame and amusement. In a normal setting, I would not only never be rude to a member of the geriatric set, but I doubt I would be faced with an abusive senior in the first place. You get caught up in the momentum around you and before you know it, you’re behaving in a manner so foreign to you, that you barely recognize it as your own. This is where I found myself when I unthinkingly tapped the old guy in the leg with my umbrella. It’s not right, it’s not respectable, it’s not even me, but it was real. Real in a way overly thought out behavior never is.

Minutes later, as I was politely pushing my way off the overcrowded cattle car the NYC transit authority refers to as a train, I felt a sharp, quick pain to my shin. The pain surprised me, but nearly as much as the sight of the old guy retracting his leg and redistributing the weight he placed on his cane. It didn’t matter that he started our grudge match, the laws of nature reached out smacked me back to reality. You don’t hit old people; you don’t say mean things to them. You forgive them for their grumpiness because after 70 or more years of making it in the world, they’ve earned it. Not many people can say they’ve been labeled a “dumb, bitch-whore” and kicked by Grandpa. I guess I can cross that one off my bucket list.