design-newyork.com

I’m sorry, were you just on your way to bed? Hey, guess what? No bed for you. We’re going to sit here while I tell you about my craptacular evening, and you’re going to listen to the whole thing.

I had a wonderful weekend. I went up to Massachusetts and saw a play and went to a craft show and checked out some galleries and ate some lovely food, it was just delightful. Then my father drove me to Wassaic, which is about a third of the way back home, to catch the train back to White Plains. I caught the train, all was well, but two towns later, the train stopped. And now we weren’t going anywhere. I figured there’s a signal problem or something and continued listening to my iPod. The conductor got on and informed us there was a fire on the tracks in Patterson and as soon as he got more information, he would inform us. Time passed, the earth rotated a bit more, and then the nice conductor man informed us that no trains were moving above Southeast and we should look for alternative modes of transportation to get where we were going. Armed with that little nugget of knowledge, I called Cricket and asked him what he would do in this circumstance. He said to get a cab to take me to Southeast where I could continue on my merry way. So I called a local cab company and got a guy to come. The cab-guy didn’t have any cabs available that evening, but he realized we were in a bind, so he came to pick us up in his own car. Oh, and then there was drama. I offered to take a bunch of people with me and there was pushing and shoving and yelling. Two hippie artists who were on the train with me came with, as well as three older women. In order to avoid a fight, I offered to sit in the trunk area of this hatchback cab, where there was something like nail polish remover leaking all over the floor and it soaked my pants. At one point the male irritating artist hippie said, “We can all ride together, but we all have to be on the same page, man. We can’t be quibbling over little pieces of leather, man.” I wanted to punch him in his little hippie mouth. Oh, and his girlfriend took the front seat without offering it to any of the older women riding with us, like it was owed to her, because, you know, they make documentaries, man, not like us status-quo squares. Anyway, we started on our fifty-minute journey to Brewster, and the driver, who is a nice 55-year-old man, says, “I’m sorry for your tough trip. I’m going to try to make you all laugh,” and we’re all thinking NOOOOOOOO please don’t. Let’s all sit in silence and think about life and its vicisitudes. But we said nothing, so he told us he used to be a pilot for TWA and proceeded to dictate every moment of the remaining trip as if it was a flight (“Hello everyone, welcome to flight 703 to Phoenix, we’re just starting our assent…”), taking breaks periodically to say driving instructions to himself (“Go, go, make the left…. NOW!”).

Oh no, there’s more. He also spoke like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd to us (we were all apparently wascally wabbits, who knew), and after we stopped at a local Mobil station, he told us he liked to make sounds like a cymbals and drums with his mouth. He then put on ABBA’s Greatest Hits and both beatboxed and made rocket-taking-off-noises (“Fwoochsh!”) to three, count ’em, three songs, until the crappy hippies yelled that they hated ABBA and he needed to turn it off, which I think hurt his feelings a little bit. The he informed us that he could smell anything, like a beagle, and howled like a beagle (“Barrooooo!”). Finally, we arrived at the Brewster station and got comfortable to wait for the next train. Not five minutes after we arrived, a train rolled into the station. OUR train. The train we were JUST ON. I guess they had cleared up the fire situation shortly after the cab left. The whole cab trip was for nothing. We all just dejectedly boarded the train again and sat back down. So my one-and-a-half-hour trip took three-and-a-half-hours and involved a mentally ill cab driver, two arrogant young hipster snotbags, and three tightly wound older women who I had to calm repeatedly. I now reek of acetone and my pants are ruined. Good times, good times.

Addendum: Snorth has informed me that I was not riding with hippies, I was riding with hipsters. It’s a subtle but important difference. I stand corrected. So, for your information, hippies = dirty, friendly pot-smoking free-lovers. Hipsters = the ass-weasels that rode in the car with me.