Temper on the subways #52essays2017 Week 18

Living in NYC you get to people watch during your travel and get to have so much insight into many peoples behaviors and mindsets. I have been observant and witness to some of the most amazing and consistent displays of human compassion and kindness as well as the most base obnoxious and willfully ignorant outburst and behavior by people. This here is going to be one of those times I have witnessed something that disturbed me.
It all starts with me walking on the Fulton platform waiting for my A train to arrive and walking up the platform where I can get to a spot that will allow me access to the first 3 cars of the train. I observed this Indian boy of no older than 15 yrs old, sitting on one the railings underneath the stairs minding his own business and on his phone. This was a place many people sat and or leaned back upon as they wait for their train as seats are limited on the platform if at all present. This day was already rainy and damnp leaving people in somewhat of a mood that can only verge on tense or annoyed. This older white women walks by and her plastic bag pancho gets snagged on the knee of this youth. The pancho catches and causes a tear along its side between her arms and flank. She jerks a bit from the snag, looks at the youth trying to decide if he did it on purpose. He obviusly did not as he softly apologized. She walks away shaking her head, headed back down the platform on her unmerry way. By this point I'm just passing the young guy in my swift NYC stride. This is when I hear a ruckus erupt behind me. Would you know this woman walked back to this kid and started screaming and cussing at him.
"You shouldn't be fucking sitting up there. Get the fuck down from there you fucking idiot!"
The boy, eyes wide and very intimidated started to gather his book bag and move..
Enter me, Captain save a ho got up right in his face without looking at her and said, "you stay right the fuck there. You don't let no bully get in your face and tell you to move. She had plenty of room for her plump ass to meander and navigate where she was going. You stay right where you at and ignore her stankin ass!" At this point i shot her a glare and she shut the hell on up and walked away from him.
I want to know what warranted such an outburst from her towards the youth. Granted the kid could have been more aware himself of where he sat and perhaps the length of his legs as he was quite tall but there is no need to talk like that to that young man who already apologized. I could not help but wonder would she have talked to him this way if he was a white child? Did she realize she was just as unaware as he was in where they were at the time of their collision and interaction? She could have easily watched her surroundings instead of assuming he was ware and would move.

I often mind my business but I see it more and more as people tend to lose their good sense or consideration for train and or subway they share with other people. I see people who think nothing of your space and comfort as their need to get home or wherever they are going overrides all things including others.

Today a black man screamed at a Latina woman because every time the train moved her bag or arm grazed him and he was not one to be touched in a crowded train in the over populated NYC. She was standing with her reasonably sized pocketbook clutched to her side and he wanted to tell her how she should be standing so that he would not get "bumped". Wrong Latina though. While not the best display of wit or intelligence, she went into pure survival mode and decided to scream louder than him and tell him about himself and how miserable he is and where he needs to keep that misery.. namely not directed at her.
They went at it for a short while and then it died down. I stepped closer to her because I was not confident if this man would hit her and while I loathed the notion of having to put down my kindle and scrap on the train I was ready to defend this young lady if he tried anything. Thank God it never happened and I got to read some more.

Oh new York transportation perhaps one day will clean you up and get some order... or maybe a psychiatrist present on the MTA.

Clothes #52essays2017 Week 17

Today was great.  I bought new clothes that were smaller than I'm used to buying.  I tried on shirts I couldn't close before and can now close comfortably, and fitted jeans I could or would never wear. See, people my size didn't wear fitted anything.
Going shopping has always been a depressing thing for me to do.  To look for cute clothes they never made in your size.  Feeling taunted by racks and racks of clothes that were all the stylish rage but you could never fit into. The myriads of clothing marked your size but definitely run smaller than average not only wasting your time in trying them on but dealing a back handed sinister stab to your emotions. Marked XXL but really a medium large. 
There were moments in a dressing room I stared in horror as the shirt i just tried on did not lay on my thick built body but instead clung to mounds and dimples I tried hard to ignore.  It willingly punted me to every problem area I avoided. If i stood still enough and listened i could feel the clothes laughing at me.  They carried the mirth of the manufactures who must have owned this moment.  My own private humiliation.  Tears have often streamed down my face as I looked at myself in these intimate private moments.  I would never be stylish, I would never be cute..i couldn't get the clothes I want I instead had to settle on whatever could close and button around my rotund frame.
Frustrated,defeated and annoyed as I would leave clothing stores.. wanting nothing more than to head to the food court for a will placed taco bell meal or Auntie Anne pretzel.. fuck it I can't fit these clothes anyway.  Might as will eat the goddamn carb laden food available and accept my date as the frumpy fat die with the cute face.
This day though, this day was different.. I got jeans i liked and they fit.  Clothes I was going to throw away that didn't fit me last summer I was able to keep.  This is new, this feels good.  While I don't feel remarkably attractive by any means it felt nice for once in my 34 years of shopping to actually feel positive about clothes shopping.. feeling stylish or dare I say Cute.

Brothers mine #52essays2017 week 16

I can tell you that me and my brothers rarely had a relationship when we lived together or when we lived on our own. The interaction was arms length at best. I do not know if it was the age difference, or the emotional baggage that comes from being half siblings, or the sibling rivalry and growing pains of normal family structure. All I knew is that I felt estranged from them my whole life. It is odd I got older one day having not interacted with them in such a long while and here comes my mother with an altered reality of life and how our whole childhood supposedly happened, reminding me that I should call my brothers and see how they are doing. UURRRR!!!!!!! :Record scratch: what was that mother? Why would I call and speak to family that never really acted as such. My earliest memories were of being picked on almost every moment. The smile spread across the face of a sibling as I got my ass beat for something I did or something I was blamed for by the smiling sibling. Or the teasing and constant reminder of how fat I was or how Girly I was, or how different I was. It is odd I would somehow be asked to forget this to hold on to a notion of brotherhood that existed only in the fantasy of one mothers mind. Do not get me wrong, I do not hate or never not loved my brothers. There was an obligatory love that one learns growing up as one is reminded of the importance of blood relatives and family. However, I could not have talked to my brothers and be just fine.
When we did speak it was always the same awkward conversation of them asking me the same questions, "How are you? Still work in the hospital? Still work for radiology? Still singing?" This is it, the only questions they could ask because this is all they knew of me in all of my life on this earth. I worked in medical and I sang. Remind me again why I needed to get involved in this so called relationship?
It is then I started thinking of mortality and my mother aging and feeling if her and my father leave this earth they would really like to leave behind an actual functioning family. A legacy of family members that can stick together and carry on some semblance of normalcy. But what if our normal was this? Divided and individual aware of each other and there in theory?

I recently connected with one of my brothers as he got a new girlfriend and his first child, my niece and its beautiful to see him being a father to not only her but to his girl friends son. It strikes a familiar cord as my father raised my brothers who had their own father from my mothers first marriage. Maybe this was the legacy that was supposed to be left behind. The responsibility, the good morals to step up to the plate as you take on a new family.

This got me thinking what was my legacy? This set me down a whole new slew of thoughts.

Legacy and me? Hmmmm