Philosophy on the NY Subway

As I prepared for my month in Manhattan, I discovered that I could get a personalized MetroCard – with a photo! – that would get me half-price on the subways and buses.

You have to know the transit lover in me to know the ecstasy that overtook me. I phoned them up right away: yes, I could come in with two photo IDs even before my birthday and I could get it right then and there. Hooray for turning 65!

So, of course, I took my sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, excited self down to 3 Stone Street as soon as I arrived. First, I had to find Stone Street, then I had to find how to travel there. I’m renting in a less-than-familiar part of Manhattan so I’m in the midst of direction-confusion and am back to writing little cheat sheets to myself after I examine all the permutations and combinations of MTA Trip Planner and my maps. Plus, I still have to learn how to lock the doors to where I’m staying.

I waited for my number to be called and headed to Window #1, and I received a gorgeous, yellow, Reduced-Fare MetroCard with my photo on it!

I can’t paint an exact picture of it here because I no longer have it. (Sob!)

After getting my gorgeous, yellow, Reduced-Fare MetroCard with my photo on it, I calculated which was the best deal for purchase. I could pay for a trip costing $1.35/trip; I could get a 7-day Unlimited Ride Reduced-Fare MetroCard for $16 or 11.8 rides in a week, or $2.29/day; or I could get a 30-day Unlimited Ride Reduced-Fare MetroCard for $60.50 which was the best deal in the whole wide world!

So off I went to the nearest subway station, to the fare machine. Nothing about it was intuitively obvious, but I came to the big existential question of the day: Was I going to “Add Value” or “Add Time”?

What would you say?

What would you say if you’d saved the attached quote in your journal for many years?

I can’t add hours to the day. I can’t add more days to a week or a month, but value? I can add value to my card (by putting money on it), value to my ride (by going for the 30-day option), and value to my whole life and the planet!

So I added value. Something didn’t look right. I went back to 3 Stone Street, got a new number and window #5: “You weren’t supposed to Add Value. You were supposed to Add Time. Nothing we can do about that now. We’ll take back your gorgeous, yellow, Reduced-Fare MetroCard with your photo on it and get you a refund in six weeks. Here’s a temporary, boring, plain old card you can go put another $60.50 on.”

Which I did.

Back to the station, I swiped my card in the swiper. It said "expired." I tried again. It said, “Just Used.” I tried another gate: “Just Used.” I’ll spare you all the back and forth trips for remedies. Eventually, a station agent let me in, and I boarded a train, slightly dreading that I wouldn’t be able to get back because my brand-new boring and untested MetroCard wouldn’t work.

But as I swiped it for the return, I saw that the message said, “Pass Expires 4/12/18.” Oh, it wasn’t expired! It was giving me handy consumer information! Bless those tiny little LED-ish messages that can’t be read in dimly lit stations! I just pressed the turnstile and was through.

This was a Big Day in my Third Third:

• Turning 65 comes with unanticipated thrills! I have unlimited reduced fares on subways, buses, even the Long Island Rail Road. If I’m never heard from again, check with the MTA.

• I still think I was adding value, not time. In the universe, I’m right. In the MTA, they’re right, and I’m finished arguing even though I did tell them they should have the capability to over-ride the magnetic strip.

• They say we have to do really difficult things to keep our brains active, and plunging myself into a new environment, negotiating bureaucracies, figuring out how they could have done it better if I were in charge – all while panicking that I’d never get home – are just exercises to avoid cognitive decline. I’m not getting older, I’m getting IQ points.

• It’s always about the adventure. I took four train trips today. I saw a parking lot with cars on elevators, I went to the Museum of Math on Pi Day, heard the author of Caesar’s Last Breath talk about air, had a 99¢ slice of New York pizza, got a New York Public Library card, and walked more than 70 New York blocks. All possible because I had a temporary, boring, plain old Reduced-Fare MetroCard.

What To Do with The Diary

Every now and then, while Sophie’s visiting, we’ll hear hoots of laughter, and she’ll say something like, “January 9. Tonight I get to go over to Helen’s house because daddy couldn’t find a sitter.” Or “April 22. Today I went with Helen to walk her dog Lefse. Lefse sure can run. She pulled me down smack on the concrete.” Then “April 23. My nasty scrape (from Lefse) the scab grew into my pajamas (stuck), Mommy yanked, Ahhhhh!!! Wa wa sob!!!”

She’s going through her 3rd grade diary, and we’re all hooting and laughing.

While in Portland, Tim and I saw an evening’s performance of Mortified. Locals go through their attics and basements, finding old diaries and “artifacts,” and then they read them to an audience. It’s so hilarious, there’s now even a documentary about it. We heard from “socially stunted home-schooled girl” with a crush on a boy in Sunday School; a young New Yorker who did “a secret thing at night when he was in bed.”

But I sent my journals to the shredder and recycling.

There were two issues I considered before doing that:

1. If I ever became famous, my journals would be valuable history. Like coming across Beethoven’s journal about how he felt about going deaf. Or the development of Hemingway’s writing from youth to old man.


2. If I didn’t become famous, my journals might provide valuable insights to the people of 3015 trying to figure out what life was like for a regular, ordinary inhabitant of earth. I got this idea when some diary was recently uncovered from a plain-old woman in the 1600s, and everyone said it was a “major find.”

I rejected both those arguments:

1. I wasn’t going to become famous, but even if I were, my journals were about how I felt about discovering sex, how I felt about feeling lonely, how I felt about making a mistake, how I felt about which path to take, etc. I must admit, they were a terrific example of teenage/20- and 30-something voice. It was right there on the page, out loud and glaring.


   
   Aiiieee, even I had to close it up. All that angst, those ups and downs! I felt at risk of contact angst just reading it. If I read it out loud to an audience, either they’d all need psychological counseling or they’d send me away for more.


2. 2015 is not like the 1600s. We have plenty of documentation of ordinary life now. My journals would be no “major find.” 

I’m very happy with the empty, de-cluttered space where the journals used to be … and the assurance that my daughter won’t come across them.

But if I could locate the little pink diary with the tiny lock that I kept when I was eight, that would be fun to read. I’d laugh and hoot over that.