It was an eventful ride today on the Blue line. It started with a delay on my connection from the Red Line that forced me to wait underground at the MacArthur Park station for about 30 minutes. I spent most of this time shoulder to shoulder with a man carrying two giants filthy stuffed animal rabbits, one under each arm. He kept hissing in my ear, “You don’t even know the difference between ginger bread and ginger snaps.” I was saved when the trains showed mercy by starting to move again — just as his mantra on my ignorance towards all things ginger started to grow in both frequency and urgency. I saw him as we pulled out screaming, “Ginger bread! Ginger snaps!”, the heads of his rabbits lolling crazily on their stuffed animal necks as if he’d spent the morning hunting in some cartoon land filled with grime-streaked, oversized stuffed animal game.

After that, I saved a man’s life. Straight up. I saved a life today. I know it’s April Fool’s Day, but I swear this is true. I was standing at the Imperial/Washington station when I noticed the train approaching. Just then a young man dropped his cell phone down onto the tracks. To my astonishment, he hopped down into the track well to pick it up. He then attempted to vault himself back up onto the platform, but his execution was off…and he badly failed. His legs hit too low and he basically flipped backwards, falling 5 feet straight back down onto the tracks. His back landed right on one of the rails where he lay there, apparently knocked out. I ran over and yelled, “Get up!” and he stirred. And with the train bearing down 150 meters out, he finally scraped himself off the ground and sort of scrabbled over to the wall where I grabbed his outstretched arms and pulled him to safety. I think another guy had his other arm. After that, I got on the train and made it to work…on time.