When I finished reading the Daily News this morning on my way to work, I kept busy thinking about my day, and looked at a kid sitting across from me, music bleeding out of his cheesy earphones. The 1 train was creeping, not zipping along, starting at 191st street. When the train limped  into the 157th street station I noticed a heavyset female police officer in our car and fantasized about her taking out the kid with the loud music.

Then I saw  a crowd of people on the uptown platform. When our train stopped and opened its doors, the officer spoke into her walkie-talkie and stepped off the train. I looked out of the window again and saw a young man, shirtless, sitting on the uptown platform, his legs dangling over the tracks. The crowd gave him plenty of room. An uptown train was stopped about fifty feet away from him. The man had a hard look on his face and he looked straight ahead or down, I couldn’t figure out which.

A woman next to me turned to her companion and raised her hand, indicating that the man was drunk. Maybe he was, or just stoned or maybe crazy. Most of the people in my car stood up to see what it was all about. Then, they returned to their seats, exchanged glances with a neighbor and went back to their book or the paper or thier music and texting.

Once our train left the station it started to move quickly again. I forgot about the annoying kid and his music and thought about the guy on the track.