Today's Strategies

The best way to prevent cell phone chatter from intruding upon your commute is to avoid it from happening altogether. With this in mind, I present the latest strategies for preventing chatty people from sitting next to you during your commute:

1. The Psoriaser - You never get a second chance to make a first impression, so why blow it and lose the opportunity to unleash a blizzard of dandruff on your neighbor? First, wear black clothing. Then, just as the train comes to a halt at each station, start scratching your scalp furiously. Your solitude is guaranteed.

2. The Preemptive Strike - Nobody likes a cell phone chatterbox, including cell phone chatterboxes. This only makes sense since they can't hear themselves thinking out loud when someone is doing that already. So next time you see someone boarding the train while chatting on a cell phone, quickly whip yours out and start yacking away. Chances are, they'll do their chatting elsewhere.

3. Germ Warfare - Coughing fits, wheezing, sneezing... all of these send out a signal far stronger than the ones emitted by cell phone towers.

4. The Galloping Gourmand - One of the unwritten rules of traveling on Metro North is that only certain types of food are allowed — foods under 10 decibels. The moment you start to audibly masticate on anything is the moment you irritate everyone around you. For this reason, I would only advise deploying this strategy when confronted with an actual cell phone transgression.

5. The Frottageur - Metro North isn't the subway, but that doesn't mean you can't invade other people's personal space. This is a strategy told to me by a friend who described it as a form of brinksmanship. Someone sits next to you while chatting on a cell phone and ends up physically rubbing elbows with you. It's assumed that you'll back down and shrink from being touched, but instead, you do just the opposite and just sit there, flesh against flesh. I've never tried this, but I've got to think it would be effective.

My Big Fat Russian Wedding

I knew I was in trouble when he boarded the train talking on his cell phone. I boarded first and for some reason he sat next to me. He was a substantial Russian man speaking in his native tongue on a cell phone that looked like a child’s toy in his enormous bear-like paw. By the time I reached Katonah it became obvious he had no intention of getting off his phone. What was he saying? Was it as inane as most cell phone conversations? Perhaps it was a medical emergency in the Ukraine and he was giving life-saving surgical instructions from thousands of miles away. Perhaps he was having one last emotional conversation with a dying parent on the other side of the world. Perhaps his son just made the Olympic ice hockey team and they’re skating down memory lane. Or maybe, he’s just a great, big, sweaty, pirogi-eating, vodka-swilling, card-carrying asshole. Yes, it is now confirmed. They have them there too. I can only hope he’s looking over my shoulder reading my monitor right now as I type my missive.

A veritable cornucopia of kvetching

One of the things I've noticed about commuting is that there is an inexhaustible supply of things to complain about. It goes way beyond cell phone chatter. For example, one of my favorites is the COFFEE CUP SEAT HOG. This is the commuter who feels so attached to his cup of steaming hot coffee that he insists on placing it next to him in the empty seat, as if the cup is just a hard-working cup o' Joe trying to make an honest living. Like it's freaking Juan Valdez himself or something. In any event, the Coffee Cup Seat Hog does two things: he makes it harder for someone to claim the seat (a situation he may or may not be aware of) and he puts a hot cup of coffee in a precarious spot between two people. I often wonder exactly what would happen if the train lurched and the cup spilled? What would he say? Sorry? Exactly how do you "fix" something like this after it happens and why is this adult willing to take that risk with a complete stranger? These are the things that keep me and others on the train on edge. What happens is you end up staring at that ridiculous cup of coffee out of the corner of your eye just to make sure you can jump away from it if it topples over. It's outrageous and these people must be stopped and promptly decaffeinated.

The 8:44 to Hell

Yesterday, I'm fairly certain I sat next to a pregnant woman on the Harlem line of Metro North whose fetus was on a cell phone. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but only a little. My commuting experience an hour north of the City every day has given me new insight into life. This is no ordinary commute. I'm pretty certain that it's a microcosm that pretty much sums up exactly how each individual on the train will travel through life itself. Some will chat away, talking about business in a self-important way that's completely oblivious to everyone around them. Some will loudly gossip on the phone without it ever occurring to them how embarrassing, vapid and even graphic their conversation is to people around them. Some will spend the time ingesting the smelliest, foulest food imaginable. Some will snooze away oblivious to it all. And some will just sit there, wince from time to time, and just take it. I guess I fall into the last camp, but this blog is my way of sharing this weird ride so many of us take twice a day. Yes, it'll probably amount to venting most of the time, but it will also be observations about how ex-City people interact when they're back living on top of each other, if only for two hours a day.