How to Survive New York City Tranportation, Part 1

F is for Foreigner Train

Last night, after having a lovely dinner with a friend at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Carrol Gardens and feeling in a generally good mood, I boarded the F train at Carrol Street only to step directly into a shower of nut shells (peanut, or possibly walnut). What a welcome!

The showerer was none other than an old Chinese woman seated directly to the left of the door, who had taken the opening of the subway door to casually throw out her trash, like when you toss garbage out your speeding car window on the open road, only this was a resting subway car in a closed station, and I became the equivalent of the windshield of the car behind you, which your refuse sticks to. (For the record, throwing trash out your car window is also wrong!)

The look on my face must have been one of absolute horror, because she immediately apologized profusely, "I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry." Indeed, I was horrified, and I ignored her apologies, and indignantly marched past her to a seat at the other end of the car, picked out the few shells that had fallen into my purse, and put on my Ipod headphones as if to say, "I must retreat into my music so as to escape this disgusting world, full of people like YOU."

But I have to admit, after a second's reflection, I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Interestingly, the day before I had witnessed a teenage hispanic boy doing the same thing with a candy rapper, and I was disgusted by that, too, but had chalked it up to the immature and disrespectful behavior typical of teenagers in general, and though I hate to admit it, particularly teenagers of a particular socieconomic status. But here it took on a wholly different cultural meaning. It became a Chinese thing. Living near Chinatown, I know that throwing your garbage, or phlegm, on the street, is normal in urban Chinese culture. But I wanted to yell at the woman, "You're not in China anymore." Of course if she lives in Chinatown, or in another of New York City's Chinese enclaves, it doesn't really matter.

I don't mean to sounds like a xenophone or a bigot. Like I said, I had a sense of humor about it. I felt like I at least understood why she would do that, even if I thought it was gross. I come from immigrant stock myself, and my grandmother, who grew up in Poland and then lived in Cuba for many years before moving to New York's Lower East Side, still cannot speak English in any fluent sense. She never had to do so; she lived in a community of Yiddish speakers, and now, even her home aides are Spanish speakers, so she can communicate with them. But, sadly, not so much with me. I can understand some Yiddish, but can't speak it really, and I took French in high school.

In a sense, living in New York, I think it's wrong that I never learned Spanish. One can say that is excluding myself from a portion of my own community. Now who's un-American?