One Bad Day

I awoke this morning to the catchy tune of Ringtone #5. Quickly, without opening my eyes, I stretched out my arm, grabbed my phone, and silenced it--executed with the easy precision of an expert snoozer. I awoke again 20 minutes later to the catchy tune of Ringtone #5, and it all went down hill from there.

At 8:45, I left my apartment and headed to the T-stop. I arrived at the platform just as the subway car trailed off. After about 10 minutes, the next train arrived. A little game I like to play in the subway is to try to stand where I think the door will open up, so that to an outsider, I looked like someone who knew the system like the back of his hand (I also like to stand a full six feet away from the ledge in case by some unknown force I fall straight forward, face down, I won't suffer any debilitating injuries if the fall coincides with the entry of an oncoming car). Today, when the train stopped, I stood exactly between two subway cars--a foreboding sign, if I ever invented one.

I entered the train, which was already packed with passengers like desperate refugees on the last boat out of a broken nation. Two stops before mine, the train stopped, and the conductor announced that due to some problems ahead, the train would be going back the other way, so if you needed to continue, you had to board the next train that arrived. It probably took a full 10 minutes for the train to empty and exit the platform so that the next one could pull in -- 5 minutes later. This next subway train would then sit at the next stop (which if you're not keeping track, is one stop before mine) for an extra 10 minutes as it announced the destination of the train on the intercom repeatedly. Finally, after getting to my stop, exiting South Station and getting to my office, I waited another roughly 10 minutes for the elevator to stop at each floor as it came down for me to catch it. I ended up about 35 minutes late to work, after leaving my apartment on time.

It was a slow day in the office. Both my project manager and project architect were out and I was left with little direction having already completed what I needed to do. I managed to find some things to correct in the drawings and spent the majority of the day alternating between being busy and appearing busy. It's a fine art. By 4'o'clock, my sinuses were acting up. And I had decided to head home early, fearing that my allergies would worsen. I left the office at 4:30pm and went home.

For a moment as I was walking down the street towards my apartment, I felt relief, and walked with a marked bounce in my step. But as I reached into my pocket for my keys, I had a telescopic vision in my head that zoomed from a map of Boston into my office and at my workstation: my keys were still at my desk. I just sighed as I wrote this because that's how despondent it made me. So I headed back to the office, meanwhile my sinuses were getting worse. The train back into the office was just as packed and warmer than the one I took in the morning, but fortunately the scheduled stops were reasonably short.

I got to my desk again to grab my keys at 5:30, my allergies starting to make my eyes slightly water. Leaving the office, keys in hand, I trudged back to South Station to catch the train home. I was highly irritable at this point and the slow couple in front of me on the escalator apparently were not aware of the unwritten rule that if you're just going to stand there, stand to the right, so that people with allergies who just left their keys in the office can run quickly down the left side and get the Hell home. I actually ran back up against the flow of the escalator so I could race down the stairs, nearly a half of a flight ahead of the slow couple.

On the train, I tried to read -- I had to hold the book up at face height so my nose wouldn't run so steadily. Meanwhile, my tears streamed readily, and my sniffling intensified. Other passengers glancing over might presume I was highly emotional, having a deeply touching reading. Holding the book to head-height fully exposed the cover, "The Devil in the White City," a book about a mass-murderer in Chicago during the World's Fair of 1893.

Finally, I made it home, a full hour and a half after I first left the office. Soon I'm going to grab some dinner and maybe find a hair in it or something. If my cold gets worse and I have to call in sick tomorrow, I'm not sure if that would be a sign of continued bad fortune, or of things looking up. Regardless, I plan to set my phone to silent tonight, and if I make it to the office late tomorrow, it will be of my own accord.

Also, my puppy* died.



*note: I don't actually have a puppy, but I felt this added dramatization would help capture the mood.