Riding the Subway

One of the things I like about having business in Manhattan every day is riding the subway. I have never understood some people's aversion to it. To me, the whole thing is pretty magical: you enter a hole in the ground in one part of the city and exit it...somewhere else. I'm a 39-year-old native New Yorker, and I still haven't tired of the magic.

I traveled home this afternoon with the first wave of the rush hour commuters. The car was full, and I watched some of the people around me. There were the high school girls chatting quietly at one end. One of them held "The Great Gatsby", and I wondered if she was reading the book for school or for personal enrichment. A young lady sitting to my left rummaged through her bag for her notebook and a pen, then began writing a letter in neat printing. She had filled the front and back of two sheets and was starting on the third by the time I disembarked. Many of my fellow commuters listened to personal stereos, just like me. As I looked at each face, I wondered about the stories behind the frown lines around their mouths or the smoothness of not-yet-wrinkled faces. I wondered if in 20 years one of those high school girls would be looking at a high school girl on the subway and having the same thoughts about her that I was having.

I wondered what (whether) people wondered when they looked at me.