Before I tell this story, first I have to tell y’all, that writing a blog (almost) everyday is fun, but often times challenging, because I’m always thinking of new things to talk about. Usually, it’s not too hard because interesting things happen to me all the time. Even when not-so-interesting things happen, I have a tendency of sensationalizing them, or just viewing them differently to make them more interesting (keeps life spicy.)

Yesterday, around 7’oclock, as I’m walking to the F train, I thought to myself, “I wonder what I can write about tomorrow.” Then, the train came.

Five minutes later, the F train, packed to capacity, stopped mid-tunnel. The rumble settled. THe lights went out. The air conditioner powered down. “I guess I know what I’m going to write about,” I thought to myself.

“Ladies and gentleman, there’s an emergency up ahead, we…” the intercom went out. “We…” it came back, “wont be moving for a while. We’re so sorry for the inconvenience.”

Silence. Everything was silent. It was so strange. Apparently, New Yorkers only make noise when there’s noise around them. But when the noise stops, when the train isn’t clanging and screeching through the tunnel, everything falls eerily silent.

Then, the heat comes. I mean, sweltering, sauna heat. Open the doors, the vent windows…
Everyone starts taking off their shirts. I start to panic, and turn the music up on my iphone to drown out my anxiety, and the fact that I hate that I’ve seen all these movies about train explosions, and train heists, and train shootings, and it’s New York…not another terrorist attack, where the hell is the random backpack, and I just got a f*cking book deal, and somebody better get me off this thing, and why isn’t anyone speaking to anyone?

Then, “Ladies and gentleman, we are going to have to evacuate this train immediately! I repeat, we will have to evacuate IMMEDIATELY!”

Panic.

We start walking briskly through the cars, police offers flooding in, as we all file out. Each cop, rushing us a bit faster toward the front of the train.

“What’s going on?” some woman asked.
“If we gotta evacuate, I dont wanna know!” a young man snapped back. I was with him. DONT TELL ME ANYTHING!

What a strange feeling of fear and helplessness.

Another cop walkie-talkied, “Revise that. We got about 800 on this train. About 800 passengers.” Unbelievable.

After being down there for about a half hour, we emerged from the tunnel, shaken, hot, nervous…and I can honestly say, grateful.

I don’t know what was going on, or what the emergency was, nor did I want to stick around to find out.

But what I learned, is that…I love to drive.

Period.