Butterflies

Note: wrote this awhile back in long hand and just got around to typing it up.  Think this was around early October 2011.

Mondays. I was rushing out the door in a mad dash to get to work for an early morning meeting only to realize when I reach my desk I had meant to drive in today. I messed up. I could have been into the office at least 30 minutes earlier (or left a little later in a calmer stet) and now I had to figure out how to fix the issue.

The solution I came up with is lugging my laptop home at lunch to jump into my car and hoof it over to a meeting at an architect’s office two towns over from where I live. Then, instead of having a nice short commute home I need to drive into Boston to meet a friend for dinner on Newbury Street. Fingers crossed parking doesn’t annoy the dickens out of me. I’d reschedule, but we’ve already done that once and it’s taken us forever to find a new time that works.

So I leave the office a bit later then intended – hop onto the T and keep reminding myself it’s out of my control for the moment – to just relax. I grab a seat on the crowded car and a moment later in piles a dozen plus young teenagers.

I cannot even begin to describe the surreal experience I had for the next few stops. This is something I love about public transportation. It throws you into a larger mix you wouldn’t usually see or overlap with – it’s so much better than reality TV.

This group of youngsters was you’re typical bunch. I think there were one or two chaperons. The kids were from diverse cultural backgrounds and a mixture of young boys and girls. And they were talking a mile a minute, bouncing form one friend to another, choosing to stand and test their balance and talking to each other across the subway car. And there I was in the middle of it all. In and of its self, this isn’t that unusual – happened before. This time, there was a twist – they were all deaf. So there I am in the center of all this flurry of movement. They’re sitting and standing and moving back and forth between friends to get their attention. EVERYONE was talking. I was fascinated but didn’t want to appear I was staring. I suddenly became very conscious of my hands in my lap. At first there were half a dozen individual conversations. But then there was a point – in the silence of the train rumbling, where there was a burst of laughter. Someone had made a joke in all that flurry. I was intrigued at first that conversations could be carried on with one hand holding on and yet by the end my intrigue was refocused on the dynamics of the group – who was trying to talk with whom. The flirting, the playing it cool – all the regular teen stuff. Needless to say by the time my stop quickly arrived all my stress had dissipated and I made it to my meeting with time to spare. You gotta love city life!