Viva Manhattan.

The embodiment of all that is Manhattan has been rearing its ugly head, and I've finally seen it... twice!

These are two separate occasions; however, I will tell them as one. I live by a subway station that is not only underground, but very much so. If that makes sense. So generally when I take the subway I position myself strategically so that the train spits me out exactly in front of the elevator that services the surface. Now, when I say "exactly" I mean exactly that. At times, I do not give the human populace enough credit, too many people have figured out this strategy as well. On this particular day it was not the mad rush to the lift I expected. However, once the subway door opened and I was almost upon the door with some other people, some random "girl" pushes by the person closest to the call button and makes sure she is the first person to press "to street", I had to stifle my guffaw and I seemed to be the only person to truly notice how absurd her action was; which doesn't make any sense. The rest of the elevator ride I spent staring a surgically precise hole in the back of this "girl"'s head.

The other incident, involving the same elevator, occurred some weeks later. Standing in the same position in the back of the elevator, I was minding my own business, which translates to me studying the carbon-based contents of the elevator car, in order to see what freaks came out for air that day*. When the car arrived at its destination (the surface), I noticed some commotion toward the front by the door. Apparently people were vocalizing their intentions to let other people out before them. An old lady that had to be in her seventies, was telling a younger woman, maybe in her late thirties, to go on ahead before her. The middle-aged woman kept refusing, and so the elder put her hand on the former's shoulder and said, "Go right ahead". The thirty-something-year-old proceeds to slap the old woman's hand off of her, flips out, and spits out, "I am not, comfortable, with people, touching me". This time around I could not hold in my scoff, and blurted out, "Are you kidding?" The people around me chuckled and one said a sarcastic "good morning". It was at this point that all of the New Yorker stereotypes came crashing down to this culminating moment. But it is OK, I can take solace in knowing that woman is going to die some day.

*Sometimes I am one of those freaks.