Chapter 3: Strange Perfumes, Walking Candy Stores and the Corridor of Urine
After waiting for about ten minutes a train pulled up and Quincy boarded the train. There was no seat empty on the train and there were very few spaces to stand in. Everyone was crowded together but no one dared smile. Maybe the people on the train continued to frown out of the belief that there were many spot stealers and the moment these spot stealers saw you smile, the would believe it to be your weakness and then they would come and steal the spot you were standing in. And one dare not chance such a thing, especially considering that you could end up in a spot without anything to hold onto. And then everyone around you would give you the look of “you better not fall on me.”
Another possibility is that people who smile are forced to move to the suburbs or the country. Whatever the case is, one thing is for sure, smiling is not tolerated on the subway, and the faces of everyone on the subway are constant reminders of this fact. Quincy had even noticed that some people had started a program of making the subway seem like a torturous place to be. To do this, people would try to create a doctor’s office like atmosphere in the subway. Creating such an atmosphere required that they inject needles into their veins in plain view. He had heard someone talk about a program called ‘Her Owen’ which he assumed must be a German code name for the project. What ever the name, clearly it was working as smiles appeared banished from the subway kingdom.
Despite what one may assume, the ride to school is not as simple as getting on one train and then getting off at school. Instead, once he arrived at the City Hall station, Quincy had to hurry to another train. Along the way to the other train, he traveled through the sea of frowns. Then he entered a corridor. Quincy was sure that this corridor was frequently visited by blind people who mistook it for a bathroom. Luckily the blind people only had to pee, so there was usually no number two-ing going on. Still, there was always a fresh puddle of piddle and the smell cleared up the stuffiest of nasal passages. In fact, the smell was so powerful that long after one had passed the puddle, the smell seemed trapped in one’s nose. Sometimes, hours later it would appear out of the blue. For instance, it would be hours later at lunchtime and you’d be about to take a sip of your apple juice when it would magically reappear to remind you to suggest to the subway people, whoever that might be, that a braile sign be placed in that corridor.
Sometimes Quincy heard rumors that people with full use of their eyes were actually the ones peeing in the corridor, but he was sure that if such were true it was only because these kind hearted people wanted to prevent the blind people from being embarrassed by their mishaps. He wished that people would not spread rumors about such exemplary people.
While walking down the corridor, Quincy noticed two young children, probably no older than four years old following a staggering man. The kids were close behind, but the man seemed to have no idea they were following him. Quincy concluded that either something was in the man’s shoe, or he had bad legs because he was wobbling to and fro and seemed to have very poor balance. As for the children, he was unable to figure out whose they were, but wondered why they were following the unaware man so closely.
As he departed from the corridor, he passed the newspaper guy. Everyday, the same guy was shouting out the headlines of the paper. And everyday Quincy wondered if the guy had ever read the paper or simply read the headlines. Sometimes he even joked to himself that maybe the guy could not even read and that he had someone else tell him the headlines. But in a school district like Philadelphia’s where almost half the students graduate from high school, what was the odds that this guy could not read.
Finally Quincy arrived at the second boarding platform. Here he found a seat on one of the benches provided for passengers waiting for the train. He took note of the fact that there were many things written on the walls and the benches around him. A lot of it was short words or phrases. Some he could read, but others he could not make out. He was sure that this was just a primitive message system used by the subway riders. For instances, he saw the words ‘Jaz was here’ carved into the wall. Clearly Jaz was letting someone know that he had been there, but had grown tired of waiting. And rather than be accused of not showing up, Mr. Jaz thought he would carve into the wall that he had been there. Below that message, someone had carved, ‘Jaz is queer.’ Quincy assumed some elementary school child was attempting to hone his rhyming skills.
Sitting near him on the bench was a generational family: a grandfather, a father and a young son. He noticed that each one of the three had a bigger left ear than right ear. He laughed to himself how nature could be so creative. But just as he was thinking this the train arrived. He noticed that the grandfather and father both got up quickly, but the son was in a daydream, so the father grabbed his son’s ear and dragged him onto the train.
Once on this train, Quincy located a seat. Nearby were a few girls who he estimated to be about 15 or 16. He noticed that these girls were quietly talking to each other about how they did not like school. This struck Quincy as odd, for he was sure that everyone must value education, his mom has made sure he valued it above all else. Then the girls got a little louder when talking about how their teacher was simply out to get them by giving them homework. They got even louder when he heard them talking about how they wanted to get pregnant so they could stop going to school. Quincy was sure that they were kidding around, as no one in such an intelligent city could think such a thing a good idea. But he could not help but notice how the louder these girls talked, the more ignorant their comments got. This was a pattern he had noted the days that he had rode the subway. Anytime he heard people talking about something he thought demonstrated true ignorance, their volume was usually as loud as it was ignorant. Quincy began to wonder if things were not always as perfect in the world as he once believed but then quickly blocked his mind to his thought. He remembered the motto of his school, Expertman, ‘If you don’t acknowledge the fact that something is wrong, it doesn’t really exist as a problem.’ This was only second to, ‘At least our students don’t bring guns to school.’
Walking down the aisle was a familiar face. Everyday he saw the same girl selling candy, and he knew she was dedicated to her trade. Everyday, just about any time of the day he could find the girl selling candy. She had even hired some guy to follow her around and teach her the ins and outs of candying marketing. He was probably famous for his abilities in the candy peddling world. The gold chains and gold teeth demonstrated he had found this skill quite lucrative. Quincy had deduced that she looked to him as a father figure, primarily as a result of hearing her call him ‘dad’. Though, Quincy hoped that the little girl would learn quickly. Her clothing was stained and tattered, and her shoes were clearly too big for her. Quincy respected the man for helping this poor little girl. While this man donated his time, her real father was probably out doing some illegitimate business and spending all his money on himself.
Behind him was a teenage boy who Quincy felt sorry for. He hated the thought of ever losing his hearing, and realized that that was exactly what was happening to the poor boy. The evidence was in the fact that his headphones were turned up loud enough that Quincy could clearly make out what song was playing. And like so many other people Quincy had encountered on the subway, this boy was forced due to his poor hearing to play music at a level that was annoying to others around him. Quincy was proud of his city, since no one asked the boy to turn it down which showed the people of Philly were willing to live with the noise so that the ailing boy could hear a song or two.
The varieties of conversations were endless. Snippets included ‘I just need a balloon full of your urine for my drug test’, ‘I’m talking about your real dad, not any of the other men your mom is doing’, ‘Oh Janie, she had to drop out of eighth grade to take care of her second child’, ‘We stopped doing cocaine right before our child was born’, ‘I’m not racist, I just don’t think the niggers need to be hanging out on the corners’, ‘They hid the rolling papers in the diaper bag’, ‘The crack dealer I let wash our car, tried to steal it… can you believe it?’, ‘I hadn’t been that wasted since I was in sixth grade.’
Yet, Quincy’s ears managed to block out all the noise around him. He was usually focused on a book he was reading. Lately, he had been reading one by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. He actually had read the book a few times before, but he couldn’t seem to get enough of it. Even at his young age, Quincy appreciated the true genius of Twain’s writing skill. He loved the way Huck was forced to confront the brutal realities of life. And how Huck came to abandon his incorrect way of interpreting the world around him. He cheered for Huck as Huck, at least in part, renounced his belief that slavery was okay and that slaves were something less than human. He rooted for him when he decided that he would help the slave named Jim escape to freedom. What a glorious book! Quincy wished that everyone had Huck’s strength of character to fight off what Thomas Jefferson would refer to as “monkish ignorance.”
Despite his love of this book, he promised himself that once he finished this reading of Finn he would read a book called Candide by some guy named Voltaire. He’d never heard of the book or the author, but Candide had been left on the seat of an empty Septa train the previous week, and Quincy decided that he would borrow it. This only happened after a Septa employ attempted to throw it away. Quincy quickly rescued the book from its assassin. People in China may be able to throw out baby girls, but damn it this is America… and that book was going to live.
His eyes tore through the familiar words on each page. He chuckled to himself as he read about Tom Sawyer’s convoluted plan to save Jim from his cage. The world around him seemed to just pass him by when he was absorbed in the story. If he only had a nickel for every time he ended up missing his stop courtesy of one Mark Twain.
Not too much longer after boarding this train he arrived at the final destination. He departed his train and made his way out on to the street. From where he stood he had a few blocks to walk until he reached his school. He went to a very prestigious school known as Expertmen. The school only allowed the best one-hundred students of each grade-level from the city of Philadelphia to come to the school. He had heard someone say that this was usually quite hard to do, as the city only had about sixty to eighty intelligent students per grade level. The cracks were usually filled in with students from the worst parts of the city because everybody knows that putting students from bad neighborhoods in with respectful students will immediately result in those worse off students abandoning their disruptive behavior and deciding to become quiet and respectful students. Unfortunately for Expertman, they had found all the students from Philadelphia that this rule did not apply too.
Rather than asking these students to leave once it was obvious that their behavior would serve as a constant disruption to the rest of the class, these students were instead mixed into classes with extremely focused students. This may be because the people in charge believed that the well-behaved students were learning too much and they used the ill behaved students to slow down the pace of the class.
Quincy began to walk towards his school and along the way passed many street vendors. One of the first vendors was a guy selling socks. Though Quincy had never forgotten his socks, he was sure that plenty of people walked by everyday and looked down and said, ‘well I’ll be damned if I didn’t forget my socks, and the lord has sent this angel to provide my feet with the proper attire.’
As he passed the sock vendor, a scruffy looking man in tattered clothing approached Quincy.
“Excuse me sir, do you have any change?”
Quincy was at first confused by the question, but then recalled that some people have coin collections. He remembered something about pennies coming from two different mints and people who collect each mint from all years.
“Was there a specific year you were looking for?” asked Quincy.
With a slightly perplexed look the man confusedly responded, “I can use anything you can spare.”
“Ah… you’re just starting your collection. I would be happy to lay the cornerstone for you collection.” As he spoke Quincy dug through his pockets and pulled out a small handful of change.
Looking a few steps beyond baffled, the man took the change, said thank you and walked away with his eyes squinted in concentration, as if he was trying to figure out what had just happened.
The next vendor that Quincy passed was selling jewelry, which he was sure sold very poorly. The part of town that he was in was not one of the richer areas, and as everyone knows, poor people do not buy items that would imitate wealth. He was quite sure that poor people would be saving up their money in the hopes of finding their way out of poverty. Clearly they would have no interest in such vain enhancements. Oddly enough, it must have been the day that rich people visited the bad part of town, as everyone seemed to be wearing jewelry such as multiple gold chains, rings, and diamond earrings. Though, the people did not appear to be all that rich based on all other factors taken into account. Quincy considered the fact that maybe they were trying to blend in. He considered advising them that the jewelry was a dead give away but figured experience is the best teacher.
There were also a lot of food vendors along the way. As he read the items on the menu he noticed that most items included eggs or cheese steak. He remembered hearing in health class that these items where not good things to eat if you were trying to lose weight, but he was certain this could not be so. His proof was the fact that everyday he saw the same people getting food at the vendors, and while they were fat, they had been fat the first time he had seen them at the vendor. Thus, clearly the vendor’s food could not have been the cause of their obesity. It was simple logic to Quincy.
Quincy finally reached the corner where he would cross to get to Expertman. Many students crossed at this place, and so the city had supplied a policewoman to act as a crossing guard. It was obvious to Quincy that this policewoman had witnessed far too many toe severing experiences where cars were responsible. Thus, over the years she had become known as the ‘Stay on the Curve Nazi.’ Many a child dreamt of the day when they would be old enough to make the mature decision of whether it was safe to place one foot on the road, but for now, they were content to know that this wonderful woman was there to provide toe placement tips.
Quincy hated confrontation, and so he managed to keep well behind the line put forth by the policewoman. When the light on the ‘Pedestrian Signal’ said walk, Quincy knew better than to proceed without waiting for the hand gesture that said ‘everything will be alright if you cross. You’re on my watch.’ Quincy walked by the policewoman, but stared at the ground. He feared that one direct glance into her eyes at close range might destroy him, so he pretended that the cracks in the pavement had formed some fascinating pattern and proceeded by her with due speed. Finally, he had arrived.
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