I have a love-hate relationship with the TTC.We don't have a car in my family, so the TTC is my lifeline. My metropass is my key to the city. It can be a real pain in the ass not having a car sometimes, but on rare occasions, even when my bus is 20 minutes late or the subway has an unexplainable "medical emergency", I can find a reason to be grateful for the human interaction on public transportation that would be unimaginable and impossible if I were boxed away in a car.
Case and point, my adventure home last night.
I was coming home from a friend's birthday party downtown. My eyelids were getting heavy, but I willed myself to stay awake for fear of being groped on the subway ride home to Scarborough. Suddenly, I'm jolted awake by an operator announcing over the intercom that we have to get off at Broadview because our train is going out of service. All of us begrudgingly trudge off the train and wait for the next one. The subway eventually pulls in and we make it as far as Woodbine, only to hear that we have to get off again because the trains aren't running between Woodbine and Vic Park and we have to catch a shuttle bus. As hundreds of people pool onto the Woodbine bus platform, a distressed looking woman comes up to me.
"What's going on?" she asks through a thick accent. I explain that we have to catch a shuttle bus to get to Victoria Park.
"Subway? Bus?" she says, a confused expression swimming across her face.
"We catch the bus here," I say, gesturing to the platform. "Someone had an accident." We discover that we're both going to the same stop, so we wait together, surrounded by agitated commuters cursing under their breath.
When the shuttle bus pulls up, hundreds of people converge on it, swarming like vultures. My new friend and I join the crowd, but the bus is already packed and I figure there's no way we're getting on.
I was wrong.
She grabs my hand and pulls me onto the bus with her. It is so crowded, I can feel people's crotches rubbing against my thighs. After an agonizing 15 minutes, we make it to Vic Park. I get on the subway with my new friend, and we start talking, now that we can actually breathe. My conversation with her makes my entire evening of TTC misery melt away.
She tells me she's from Afghanistan. She left 16 years ago because it was too dangerous. She lived in Russia for the first nine years and then moved to Canada, spending 10 months in Quebec City. She starts speaking to me in French and I converse back with her, trying to remember as much as I can from my second-year night-school French class. She tells me about her husband who tells her she's too old to wear short skirts and tank tops and how she ignores him because the clothes make her happy. She tells me about her kids, her family, and her teaching job back in Afghanistan. Half an hour later, we're waiting at the subway together and her bus comes to take her home.
It may not sound like much, but meeting this woman turned my whole evening around. I missed my bus and had to wait 25 minutes in the damp and cold subway for the next one to come. But I didn't care. This stranger put a smile on my face when I had a million reasons to grumble and complain.
I got home and regaled my evening's events to my boyfriend. I couldn't wait to tell someone else about this person I'd met.
I guess, simply put, I like talking to strangers. Sometimes they're not the scary candy-loving, white-van driving psychopaths your parents warned you about. Sometimes they're good people with a lifetime of stories that can spark up your life.
*photo courtesy of daily dose of imagery
