Do not ever lean on the doors!

Photo Brian Feeney / Flikr

This morning at about 9:30 is was on a downtown A train.  Not to crowded and I happened to be in the last car. 

Everyone was sitting quietly.  There were some tourists on their way to the Airtrain, a few wall street types that were late for work.  But mostly I think the train was full of hard working New Yorkers who were coming home from a late shift.

I did not notice at first but when the conductor announced that we were at Canal St, we were not.  The front of the train might have been at the Canal St Station, but the back of the train was not.  This was painfully apparent when the doors opened into a dark sea of emptiness that is a subway tunnel.  We sat there stunned.  Nobody moved. (I should have taken out my phone at snapped a photo).  Then after a normal amount of time the doors closed.  The silence was broken by "Damn, I am glad I was not going to Chinatown."  We chuckled.

Then things got a little scary.  The train was not moving.  I walked to the forward end of the car and looked ahead.  It appeared that 2 cars ahead there was come commotion. For a minute I thought someone might have stepped off the train and onto the tracks.  It really made me sick to my stomach thinking that I was on the train where someone got hurt.  But, turned out to be nothing.

After a period of time that was between 10 minutes and an eternity, the train pulled forward.  (It was actually a short period of time.  Because when the train did move up, we all knew that nobody got hurt, because if anyone got hurt we would have been stuck for a really long period of time.)  And again the conductor said Canal St, change for the C and the E, just like we were there for the first time. People got on, nobody got off.

The people in the front and middle of the train probably did even know why the train stopped at the station twice.  We felt gypped that we got no explanation, no apology, no story.  But it did make for a great New York Moment.