SelfAbsorbed.ME : ‘It’s Your Life, We Just Write it Funnier’

Yesterday, beautiful weather called for a trip to Central Park. Despite my eagerness to embrace the outdoors, I was unsurprisingly running late to meet my friend at the Park. Hair half-wet and unbrushed, I power-walked to Union Square and raced down the subway stairs, just barely making a crowded 4 train. Panting with a slight wheeze (allergies! tis the season), I shouldered my way deeper into car and grabbed the warm, slightly sweaty metal bar. Ooh. The subway is so communal.

I distractedly ran my hand through my hair, shaking out some of the knots while simultaneously maximizing the volume. I know, I know–when it comes to hair tossing, I have mad skillz.

Or so I thought.

I suddenly felt part of my mane catch on something. I moved my head forward a little. I felt resistance. I also heard a muted cry. Oh, no.

Trying to move my head as little as possible, I stiffly turned my neck, straining to see over my shoulder. I was staring at the face of an outraged middle-aged woman–a mom.

“Oh my God. Of all the careless things! You’re on a f***ing subway you know. There are people around you! Wake UP!”

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. What have I done?!?! I turned further, feeling a bit of tug again and hearing a much younger voice cry “Whada f**k!” And then I saw it: A rather thick lock, no, knot of my hair. And it was in an adolescent boy’s mouth.

In his braces, to be exact. What? How was this even possible?! But, upon further observation, I could see that the knot was caught on the front brackets. Though I could hardly believe my eyes, it seems fate had aligned my hair toss with the exposed brackets in such a way as to bind the two together.

“Ughhh,” his mother groaned, as she came between me and the boy, starting to pick at his open mouth. “We just got these tightened.”

No! Not a we-mom! I was living out some twilight version of a romantic comedy: snaring a boy before he’d cut the cord with his mommy.

She was tugging at my hair as her son’s head bounced like a bobblehead doll. Since mom had taken the reins in the situation, he seemed to have lapsed into indifference, though his mouth remained half open with his upper lip curled under, away from his teeth. I felt less apathetic.

“Jesus!” I cried, horrified at being tangled up in this family affair. “Let me do it!” At this point I’d managed to get closer to the boy so I could turn my body to face him.

“Hey, watch your mouth around my kid,” she snapped. This coming from the woman who’d proved herself an F-bomber just seconds before, not to mention her son’s outburst. At this point, we were approaching Grand Central and I desperately wanted to change subway cars. Placing my hands on the boy’s hunched, underdeveloped shoulders as though we were about to start middle-school slow-dancing, I looked down into his eyes, a good three or four inches below mine, and said, “I’m sorry.” I really did feel bad. The subway isn’t the most sanitary of places, but no one should ever have to catch a hairball in the mouth.

“What are you doing?” the we-mom cried impatiently. She had her hand in a death grip around her son’s bicep. As I heard the twinge of fear in her voice, I swear she thought I was about to make out with him. She started going off about my “unacceptably oblivious attitude” and lamenting my “rat’s nest.” I tuned her out. We-moms simply cannot be taken seriously by the likes of twenty-something girls–we’d rather die than catch their condition.

As I peered at the knot, I could see that it had become particularly ensnared on the bracket of his left front tooth. I picked and tugged at it for a second, but the train’s slowing speed made me impatient. Grand Central’s platform appeared. I bent even closer towards his face as I made sure the piece of hair was slackened.

Then I tugged again, tearing the tiny dreadlock away from the few strands that had twisted around the delicate wiring. Before I turned to flee, my brain was branded with the image of the split ends still clinging to the metal, sticking straight out like freakish gum whiskers.

Then my eyes met his once more and his metal mouth reshaped into an unexpected punky smirk accompanied by a little chin nod as he said, “So, you on Facebook?”

I turned and ran.

This has been the second hair-raising subway experience I’ve had in the past few months. Reflecting upon the incident now, I’m amazed to find that events so utterly strange and traumatic could occur within about five minutes’ time. In part I can attribute it to the enclosed subway car: closed spaces generate more chaos, or something intro-physicsy like that. It’s enough to make me claustrophobic.

However, at the time, as I stood panting once more in a new though equally crowded subway car, all I could think was, Middle schoolers have Facebook? What?

I tend to get caught up on the smallest things.

Photo Credit: nytimes.com