The Best Time Someone … Surprised Me on a Subway Platform
It happened back when I was living in Queens. I was heading to yoga, waiting for the train, and listening to music. A woman walked up to me and started speaking, and because I couldn't hear her, I removed my headphones.
Before I get to the exciting part of this story, I’d like to note that this woman looked perfectly put together. Her red lipstick was meticulously applied. Her coat was stylish and weather-appropriate. She had a tidy little bob of a haircut, and I thought she was going to ask for directions. What I’m trying to say is there were no obvious signs she was crazy.
“Do you like books?” she whispered.
Wuh-oh, said the little thought bubble above my head.
“Oh yeah, sure. I mean, who doesn’t like books?! Books are great!” I said with one of those uncomfortable, high-pitched laughs.
“What kind of books do you like?” she asked, inching toward me.
“Oh, all kinds!” I said in an attempt to be cheery and inoffensive.
“Do you like sci-fi books? Which one is your favorite?”
Now here's where things get tricky. The rational part of my mind told me to end the conversation as soon as possible, but the truth is I do, in fact, have a favorite sci-fi book. It’s Ender’s Game. And in my never-ending quest to be a smarty-pants, I still wanted to answer the question. So I hesitated. And I’ll always be left to wonder, did she notice my hesitation? Is that what tipped off her crazy?
Anyway, after a few seconds I told her I didn’t know.
So she clocked me.
Like, flat-out punched me in the face.
I was disorientated and the bridge of my nose stung and OH MY GOD SOMEONE HIT ME. IN THE FACE. I was so stunned I just stood there — until she started to come after me a second time, and I learned my flight-or-fight response definitely errs on the side of flight.
“WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER?!?!” she screamed, chasing after me. Then she let loose a stream of obscenities, and I’ll spare you the details, but most started with “c.”
I was sprinting down the platform shouting "Oh my God!" with her right behind me, and, this being New York City, of course no one helped. But finally I left her behind and made it up a staircase to the upper level, where I watched as she boarded a train, still cursing under her breath.
In shock, I went on to my yoga class, where I stood numbly in Warrior Two. The reality of the experience set in, however, when I got on the subway to go back home. That guy right there, eating a sandwich, was HE going to punch me in the face? That woman calmly reading her Bible, was SHE hiding a shiv? She looked totally capable of stabbing me. And what about those CHILDREN? What was that lump in the back of that one kid’s jacket? WAS THAT A GUN?!
Naturally, three weeks after the face-punching incident, a little old lady stopped me on the street and I, once again, removed my headphones because I'm a person who doesn’t learn anything EVER. She looked me up and down several times. Then she told me that she wanted to make sure I wasn’t “calling on anyone.” As I stood there dumbfounded, she turned around and muttered “whore" in my direction. I was dressed like Peggy from Mad Men that day.
The moral of this story is NEVER TAKE OFF YOUR HEADPHONES.
Just don’t.
Lindsay Hood is a freelance writer who lives in New York City. She runs The $30 Project and still rides the subway.
WELL. Now when my commute is terrible I can just repeat to myself "at least I haven't gotten punched in the face."
A) best story ever.
B) I second the rule of never take off your headphones in a big city when a random person comes up to you. Once I was walking (to the subway, actually!) and a large African gentleman came up to me and motioned for me to take off my headphones, so I did, and then he asked me to marry him and said he would take me to a basketball game. Repeatedly! Also I was like, 17.
this would have been a better story if you actually married him.
So…..how was the game?
It turned out great! The Raptors won, and I am now ruler of a small kingdom in Nigeria.
LISTEN, I get you. The last time I took off my headphones in New York, I was tapped on the shoulder, only to turn around and be slapped across the back with a sopping wet towel, soggy with fecal matter. As I went stiff with horror, taking account of what may have just happened and what the liquid I felt dripping from my face could possibly be, oh god oh god, the hunch-backed man leaped atop a park bench, slapping his shit-laden whip onto the ground, back and forth, back and forth, as he pranced around to the step of what I can only assume is the heavy-hooved dance of the Devil.
Sometimes I'll wake up after having fallen asleep in a strange position, too confused and out of sorts to realize the dead weight I feel on my shoulder is actually my own, half-asleep arm, and I scream, knowing that maniacally unhinged and toothless smile is right behind me, posed to slap me across my body with his freshly laid excrement.
Oh my godddddd this story makes me want to cry, and to never go outside again.
This is way worse that getting punched in the face. You got punched in the face with poop. I am horrified!
Okay, well, in an effort of full disclosure, it was more like… "punched in the back with poop, lapped in the face with the tidal towel poop splash that crashed ashore (my shoulders)." Which is still exactly horrible, but I don't want to be misleading! Shall I use more poopy adjectives? Oh dear fathaah, NO! I cannot not bear it! I shan't say another word!!
Sorry Lindsay, maggie totes wins.
That has to be the most horrifying thing I've ever heard. Dude had a shitwhip. A motherfucking shit whip.
Oh my god!! That is HORRIBLE. You deserve a tiny baby animal for this. Hedgehog or ferret? My treat.
WHY WON'T YOU WHORES TELL ME YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS !!!!!!?????
OMG!!! That lady, if it's the same one, is still out there. Either that or she has a crazy sister who also wants to talk about books. Did she have sort of an eastern European accent? "My" lady had wavy, brown, shoulder-length hair. I think she had light colored eyes. No makeup, wearing a backpack, casually dressed. Clean, but not particularly stylish.
Last summer, on the train (4/5? or 2/3?) I was standing there, holding the pole, minding my own beeswax and this lady gets on and stands near the door. I saw her looking at me out of the corner of my eye. After the train started moving, she gets in my face and says "WOULD YooO LIIIKE TOO TALK ABOWT BoooOOOKS???" I politely replied "No, thank you." Then she said "YoO DON LIIKE BoooOOOOKS?" And I lied "No." (Even though I had just finished reading Just Kids by Patti Smith and LOVED IT!!) So she goes "WHYY WOWN YOOO TALK TO MEE ABOWT BoooOOOOKS? At this point, I give her my well-worn, stare-right-ahead-and-ignore-whoever-is-harassing-me treatment. (I was in a pissy mood.) So the lady starts to wander around our end of the car, and next thing I know, she's screaming, cursing, and BEATING some woman who was sitting in the seat next to the door! Some people started yelling and tried to move her away so she stopped, but then she started again. Stopped. Started. Finally the train pulls into the station, many of us flee the car. I ran along the train until I found a conductor and told him "There is a crazy lady two cars back, and she's really violent." He didn't seem perturbed and the train pulled away.
I think I was really lucky not to be the person she turned on. But crazy lady was pretty lucky too, because I was in a BAD MOOD and probably would have taken her down. La La LAAAAAA!
uuummm… that sounds EXACTLY like the woman who assaulted me!!!
I work in lower Manhattan, and I swear I have encountered this woman in the lobby of my office building. The backpack, vaguely Eastern European, no makeup, shoulder-length brown hair – it all sounds about right. I started answering her questions but left before anything weird(er) happened. Everything happened up until the getting violent part! Who knows what would've gone down if I had stayed.
I think I saw her once again in the lobby, but I knew to avoid her that time.
I was trying to capture both her accent and her crazy with my typography.
So she's still out there, but it seems like her look is going downhill.
What are the actual chances of three Hairpin readers all encountering this same insane lady?!
um, excuse me. i would like to add my own experience to the list. the same thing happened to me! a backpack wearing eastern european woman (i always thought she was young-ish, maybe 19), approached me on a mega-crowded F train and asked me if i liked science fiction. i said yes. she asked what the last science fiction book i read was (oddly enough, it was enders' game, but i couldn't remember the title in such intense circumstances), and when i told her i couldn't remember, she started attacking me and screaming "you must remember science fiction! you must remember science fiction!" and two guys held her from me til the next stop and shoved her out onto the platform. she is a serial science fiction crazy woman!
I love how she is pretty much covering the ENTIRE city, outer boroughs and all.
This is crazy! Is she really that young too? Maybe there is a city-wide underground network of extremely aggressive science fiction fans? (They'll occasionally emerge from underground if necessary in the aggressive pursuit of a victim.. sunlight hurts their eyes, but they will tolerate it, if properly [un]provoked.)
*raises hand* ME TOO, YES, THIS. Holy shit, I have talked to her, too! D train from Brooklyn to Grand Street. I can hear her exact accent in my head. She seemed harmless so I talked to her about, yes, sci-fi books. Dear God, now I am SO GLAD I responded to her immediately…
OH GOOD now I can commute mired in terror that this woman is still out there.
@talie At least you have a pretty good description of her now? AVOID AT ALL COSTS but if you do encounter her, mention your love of science fiction or at least be willing to "discuss" books. I had a 5 minute conversation with her and then she fortunately left me alone.
Good luck in future commutes…
Here, atip….enjoy!
Thank you. UBIK, here. http://www.amazon.com/Ubik-Philip-K-Dick/dp/0679736646
Wearing headphones in a city (especially on a train) is like walking through the lions den blindfolded. I do not understand this concept. What if gunfire is going off in the next train car (hello Long Island Railroad Massacre)? What if you are on a bus and sitting just in front of that dude that cut the head off the guy he was sitting next to?
Sometimes I wear headphones but don't actually turn on my ipod. That way I can listen to my surroundings but also let people know I don't wish to speak to them.
Well this Personal Best and its comments are making me really glad I moved away from New York. I love you sweet, precious, empty car.
Yesterday I was walking from CVS to my office at 8:30 in the morning and I see a man running full speed ahead towards me across the street. He had a crazy look in his eye so I had a bad feeling right from the get go.
I did the normal thing and moved over so he would have plenty of room to run right past me. Instead of doing that, he stopped in front of me and started jumping up and down and waving his arms, sort of like a basketball blocking move. When I tried to go around him he would move to block me.
At this point I fully panicked and started shouting at him "LEAVE ME ALONE LEAVE ME ALONE" and then I guess fight-or-flight took over because the next thing I remember I was running down the street thinking, "When did I start running?" I ran about a block, looked back and he was gone.
There weren't a ton of people on the street but I know a few must have witnessed the whole thing. I've been sort of amused picturing myself holding my crap from CVS and yelling "leave me alone," at this dude jumping up and down in front of me.
well, at least now we know her modus operandi.
Don't even respond to compliments! Once a harmless-looking pudgy teenager said that he liked my shoes, and I said thanks.
"I want a girlfriend with nice shoes well I just want a girlfriend do you have a boyfriend?" (moving closer and closer) "Even if you do have a boyfriend I won't tell I won't tell" (making really gross "zip your lips" motions) "will you zip your lips? Zip zip zip. Where do you live? I live on Montrose stop." etc. I was "very engrossed in my book" at this point. Not to be dissuaded, he sits next to me on the train, and tries to pet my hair, and when I said "please do not do that" he PULLED it really hard and ran away to the other side of the car and got off at the next stop, which was not his.
Not that traumatic, but still a bit odd.
Heh once a boy complimented me on my shoes and I let him buy me a drink–it was maybe my second weekend living in the city and I had no idea how these things worked. Turns out he was in a weird band and things fizzled after our second date. I should have known he just wanted to get laid since I was wearing Converse–not like I looked glamorous or anything.
not subway related, as there are no subway stations in austin. but once while waiting for the bus home from work in the pouring rain a lady walked over to me and demanded i let her hold my umbrella. i politely declined. she kept insisting, before finally giving up and settling on having a one-sided conversation "with" me. she complained that after she stabbed her boyfriend it was hard to get her job back at kentucky fried chicken. but the real gem was when she asked me "don't you just hate it when you have to have sex for drugs?"
i got off the bus three stops early and walked home in the rain.
(i also lived a few blocks from the state mental hospital, which made for interesting bus stop experiences headed into town.)
A few weeks ago, I was sitting on a moderately crowded 5 train, headphones, book, the whole commuter-bubble thing. It faintly registered that a slightly unhinged dude had come into the car from the door on the other end. He started shuffling through the car, muttering abuse at random people. When he got to me, for no apparent reason, he took a wild swing at my head. I'm an amateur boxer, and I did the thing that came naturally – I dodged. He didn't react at all to my defense. He just kept on walking. Nobody else on the train did or said anything. So I went back to my book and made a mental note to thank my trainer later.
I have no idea why he tried to hit me – if he saw the gear bag at my feet or if he was just lashing out at the person ignoring him the hardest. But man, if my commuter bubble can't protect me from the crazy people, I guess I'm glad my boxing-honed reflexes can pick up the slack.
(Incidentally, I'd never hit someone back in this kind of situation and I wouldn't recommend it to others either. I have to think anybody trying to hit a random person isn't really in control of their actions, which means not only do they probably not deserve to be punched by someone who IS in control of their actions, fighting back could escalate the situation in a lot of bad and unpredictable ways.)
Great advice. (If you are a Dude, you should be put into the rotation.)
Nope, not a dude, but maybe I'll have to start my own advice column: Ask a Boxer!
I thought this might be a nice change from all these stories of random violence…
A few years ago, I had a little too much fun on a Saturday night, and found myself with the world's worst hangover on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, on this day I couldn't just sleep it off/barf it out at home because I had a really important appointment to go to, and although I tried to get ahold of the people I was meeting, I couldn't get in touch with them to cancel. I didn't want to be a jerkface and not show up, so I decided I should just suck it up and go.
Getting from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side on that February Sunday was already terrible because of construction and re-routes, and it was even worse because I kept barfing. Seriously – I was the chick booting into the trash can in public. I was humiliated.
While I was waiting for the A at West 4th St., I was sitting on a bench, praying for death, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. There was a well-dressed youngish guy standing there, with a can of ginger ale and a pack of Kleenex. He was a totally random stranger, but he'd obviously seen me puking and had bought the soda and tissues at the newsstand on the platform. He just said, "Here, I thought you might want these. I hope you feel better." I was so grateful I cried.
Whenever people talk to me about New Yorkers being cruel or indifferent, I like to tell them this story.
AHHHHHHHHHHH that story. I hope you guys are best friends now.
And then you got MARRIED IN A CASTLE, RIGHT??
She knew it was Ender's Game. She knew!
This is why you don't stand near the edge of the platform. In case someone gets any weird ideas about pushing you.
In my experience, scenarios that begin with someone asking if you like books almost always ends with that person trying to convert your ancestors to The Book of Mormon
does it count if it was while riding the subway? as in, while i was asleep on the subway a stranger woke me up by kissing me? (surprising to say the least). I was so tired and out of it (also totally sober, i swear!) I didn't really realize what had happened until it was too late and he was off the train. I sat there dumbfounded, exchanging bewildered looks and shoulder shrugs with the guy across from me, who was reading a chinese-language newspaper and probably didn't even speak english.
Years ago I was walking in a subway tunnel when something/one hit me in the back of the legs. I turned around to see a very normal looking business-like woman carrying a shopping bag behind me. What is with these crazy folks with no outward signs?? She continued to try to swing her bag into me and stomp on my heels. I scurried to the side and she moved on – stomping on more unfortunate feet in her wake. It literally shook me for the rest of the night. Guess someone was having a bad day?
I've had some horrific experiences on the DC metro, but the weirdest was a woman (she was normally dressed) who approached me and touched my hair and told me I had pretty hair – OK, weird with the touching but I just mumbled, "Thanks." She then told me that she used to have hair like that and I must have stolen it from her, and that when we got to the next stop she was going to find a policeman and tell him that I stole her hair. The look of panic on my face must've alerted the co-worker I was with, because we departed the car at the next stop (which I'm sure wasn't ours).
Reading these stories though, I'm just glad she didn't violently attack me to retrieve her hair.
Hahaha. But you did steal it, remember? Back in in '74? I know, because I was the one who dared you! Snatched it right off her head and then ran. I forgot about this! Also, I am calling the police.
It was about six years ago, I had an appointment so was catching the train at about 2pm in the afternoon. Ticket collectors start checking tickets, and then I hear him say to two oldish ladies "I'm sorry ma-am, you can't carry knives of public transport."they said something then, "If someone is threatening you, you should go to the police. But you can't carry knives on the train". They had a big big knife sitting between them on the seat.
I was on the Red Line in Chicago once about three years ago, minding my own business when a guy slid into the seat next to me and announced to the whole car that he could smell my white cunt, all Silence of the Lambs style. He started squashing me into the wall of the car, and I had to climb over the seat in front of me to get out.
Worse was that nobody said anything.
BUT– I took a self-defense class at work after that, and the woman who ran the training said that once on a train, a guy touched her ass. She grabbed his hand, held it aloft like a winning prizefighter, and announced at full volume, "Hey! Look what I found on my ass!" The guy jumped off the train at the next stop and ran away.
Enders game is my favorite Scifi too!
One of them anyway.
and yeah, punched in the face…. At least its a good story though…