Only in New York!

So yesterday I'm about to enter a subway car, and as this guy flees the same car, he says something like, "Trust me, you do NOT want to go in there."

And usually when someone warns you like that, you listen. You never know if there's a homeless guy, crazy person, troubled youth or whatever lurking within, and it's just wiser to pick a different car.

So I did that, along with some other passengers and this man. One lady asked him, "What's going on in there?"

His response: "There's some lady in there, smells like she hasn't washed her [I can't type the word] in weeks!" Then, seeing that he was talking to a woman, he apologized.

So there I stood in the normal-smelling car (and, despite what the liberal media says about New York subways, most of them are fine. Just every now and then one is pretty awful), and the guy points out the offender to me. Because by this point we are buddies.

"See that lady with the walker? That's the one. Damn, I can't believe people are going in there! Look at them! Damn!" Although, truth be told, no one was really reacting much to her awful-smelling [again, I refuse to type that word].

I didn't want to talk to this guy anymore, since I had nothing to say (and what is there to say, really, other than, "Yep."?), and THEN the guy announced to everyone that he's homeless, just looking to get some food, could use a little help, one of the standard panhandling spiels you hear so frequently.

And that's when I'm like, "You bounder! There's probably NOTHING wrong with that other car! You just wanted to get more people in here so you'd have a better chance of getting some spare change. And now you think because you warned me specifically, I owe you. Well, sorry, buddy, that ain't happening, I just spent all my singles on these puppet skins. And maligning a poor old lady with a walker. For shame, for shame."

At this point I should also mention that, despite what the liberal media portrays, not all homeless people are grizzled and in rags and wearing garbage bags for feet. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of those, but sometimes they're people who pretend to work for fake organizations and are dressed nicer than me. So you can't always tell if someone is homeless. Heck, people have mistaken me for a subway weirdo, but only because I was saying "Hoppy Easter!" to myself over and over again.

None of this is a particular Year of Yes moment, but then when I reached my destination, I passed by the offending car. And I thought to myself, "Was that homeless guy lying, or was he telling the truth about the lady in the walker?"

And sometimes I just gotta do something stupid, like calling a bunch of kids retarded or yelling out to John Goodman "Hey, Mr. Monsters Inc.!", which I did last night after seeing him in Waiting for Godot (which was surprisingly disappointing), so I decided to take one step into the forbidden subway car and smell it.

That's really stupid, I know, it's like taking a swig of milk that someone says is spoiled, but I had to know if that homeless guy was lying. It would haunt me forever. It really would.

So I took one step in, right near the lady with the walker, sniffed, and walked out.