04.14.08
ADVENTURE AND DANGER, LOVE FROM A STRANGER:
The first sign of trouble was when I saw downtown Richmond whizzing by my train window.
I gasped and my first reaction was to smack the window with my palm. I looked around frantically and waved down the ticket collector who was near the front of the car.
"I...I missed my stop!"
"You missed..." he paused, mulling this over, "your stop? I made an announcement."
"I WAS ASLEEP!" I whispered through clenched teeth. This was not entirely true. I'd been zoning out, staring out my window waiting for the train to fully pull into the station. The last time I'd ridden the train back to VCU the train had stopped a few yards back before fully pulling into the station and I assumed this was no different.
"Well, what I'd recommend you do is get off at the next stop. Do you have somebody you can call?"
"Yeah, yeah, alright."
"Okay then," he turned to the rest of the train, "Next stop Williamsburg, 45 minutes!" I metaphorically poo'ed my pants.
A few moments later the conductor returned. "I'm afraid I've got some bad news." he said. My eyes widened. "This is the last train tonight to or from Richmond." he said. Metaphorical poop was everywhere.
When we got to the station I practically ran to the payphone to call my house, because yeah, my cell phone was dead. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I had to call collect. When I told my mom what had happened she whispered "Are you bullshitting?" I guess Carly was in the room too.
After assuring her that no, I was not bullshitting, yes, I had missed my train, ("How?!" "I WAS ASLEEP!") and that yes, I was now in the Williamsburg train station, she asked if there was anyone I could call.
"Mary, she has a car, I don't know her number though, my phone is dead!"
"What are you going to do?!"
"I can call Colleen, she might have Mary's number."
"I have Colleen's number in my phone, stay on the line, I'll call her for you."
This last sentence of hers made me nervous. Until a week ago, I don't know she'd known how to even answer her phone. The fact that my LIFE was now in her near tragically ineptness with her cell phone made me once again metaphorically poo my pants.
I heard her distant voice curse, my dad who was also on the line with me asked what had happened. I heard her get back on the phone.
"I JUST DELETED COLLEEN'S NUMBER!!"
I laughed in spite of myself. "What?! How did you manage that?!"
"I TRIED TO TEXT MESSAGE HER AND HER NUMBER IS GONE!"
"Why are you texting her?! I'll give you the number, just call her!"
"OK, ALRIGHT!"
A few minutes passed, my mom had Mary's number and tried calling. I could hear her leave a message on Mary's voicemail and I cringed with embarrassment. My pride had flat lined. Here I was, fancying myself a lady traveler and yet somehow had wound up stranded and alone at ten o'clock in Williamsburg.
My dad decided that what I'd have to end up doing was get a hotel room and then catch the next train back to Richmond at nine thirty the next morning.
Just as he was about to call a hotel, Mary Carter SENT FROM THE HEAVENS ABOVE, called my mom back. I heard my mom say "OH THANK YOU THANK YOU! I LOVE YOU MARY!" I winced with embarrassment and resolved that the next time I found myself in a situation like this, I'd hold onto my pride and not tell anybody. I'd sleep in a ditch outside and then catch the morning train back and the next time I'd speak to my parents I'd play it off like I'd forgotten to call when I'd gotten back to my dorm room.
The station was closing at ten thirty but the man behind the desk said that he'd wait until my ride showed up.
There was another stranded girl too. She was younger than me and obese and black. When I was on the phone with my parents she'd asked me for a dollar for the vending machine. I'd given her one after she added "I'm hunnnnnnnnngry!"
I sat down to wait for MARY CARTER, BLESSING AND HONOR BE UPON HER NAME, and she started to talk to me.
She was coming from Philadelphia and had gotten off a stop too early by mistake. "Yeah, I'm from Philadelphia, but I like to call it Philly." She had a light voice with a rasp at the end of her sentences. It was like a hedgehog had curled up in her larynx. "Yeah, I'm so hunnnnnngry" she repeated, one hand on her voluminous stomach. I nodded in agreement, I suppose.
"I was calling EVERYONE I know down in Newport News to come get me," she went on. "My sister, her boyfriend, my brother...and...well..that's about it. We used to live in Philly, but then my sister came down here with her boyfriend and then my brother came down a year later and I was like 'I want to come too!' You know?"
I nodded again.
"So I came down here for a better life."
Ah yes, I thought to myself, Ghetto life in Philly, I'd heard about such a thing from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song and the back of cereal boxes.
"I used to be HUGE" she exclaimed. "Now I'm much smaller. I used to be THIS big" She held out her flipper like arms a foot away from her sides. "I was like, waddling you know?"
I nodded, we've all been there...I assume.
A few minutes passed and then a thin girl and a boy with a long scar across his face came to get the girl. She left without so much as a look back. THANKS A LOT.
This left just the man behind the ticket window and myself. He told me he’d stay until my ride, MARY CARTER, BLESSINGS BE UPON HER, got there.
"So you go to school up in Richmond?" he asked. I said yeah.
"Yeah, I’ve got a stepdaughter who applied there, got her letter the other day, she didn’t get in."
I didn’t catch it the first time so I asked him to repeat it.
"She didn’t get in" Oh. GOO!
I tried to save face. "Was she applying for anything in particular?"
"Yeah art…she’s not very good though."
"Oh, yeah I’m in the art school."
"Yeah?"
"Um. Yes. It’s really hard."
"Hard to get in?"
QUICK WONDER, WRAP IT UP. "Yeah, really hard, they’re really good and umm freshman year is really hard, there’s a fifty percent dropout rate the first year."
"Oh yeah?" he sounded relieved, as if he’d realized had she gotten in, she would have dropped out anyways.
I shook my head yes. He walked to the other end of the station to grab something. When he came back he looked as if he wanted to say something but by then I was scribbling furiously my last will and testament. I must have looked pretty preoccupied because he turned again and went back into his office.
The minutes went by fairly quickly, no doubt fueled by my fear that at any moment Felicity (An American Girl no less) and her Patriotic compatriots would come from the Colonies and drag me to the depths of Williamsburg’s tourism industry.
Just when I thought I was a goner, MARY CARTER, BLESSINGS AND HONOR BE UPON HER, and Olivia came and rescued the husk of a Ginger lady I now was.
MORAL OF THE STORY: MARY IS A TRUE AMERICAN HERO, LET THIS STORY STAND AS A MONUMENT TO HER GREATNESS.
TAKE IT TO YOUR GRAVES.
ratherbored at 21:48