I Seem To Have Caught This Humbug That's Going Around.

There are too many people on this train. The door closes on my shoulder, hurtling me forward into the throngs inside the car before I have a chance to decide to step back outside and wait for the next train. The guy next to me in the baseball cap sort of looks at me sideways, from under his hat, like it was me who shoved him. Sorry, I say. I honestly didn't mean it. I'm doing my best to be polite.

The train spills us out at our stop and we gasp for breath through the turnstiles. I make my way — no, after you — up the stairs, trying to pass the zig-zagging girl staring at the glowing screen of a phone. No, after you.

My feet carry me inside the store. These shopping baskets are too big. I try to maneuver around a glassy-eyed college student staring at the racks of potato chips. My umbrella knocks into a shelf of Oreos and Cheez Whiz (why these two items are shelved together is both perplexing and cheech-and-chongingly obvious), sending a tin of artificial cheese product spinning across the narrow aisle. He stares at me as I stoop to pick up the can, struggling under the awkward weight of basket, books, the lot. When did I become the west side woman laden with bags of shopping, the woman that younger people ignore, the woman with her hair disheveled, clutching her bus pass, lunging after trains, wide-eyed and increasingly frustrated? Am I her now?

I make my way — no, after you.
I make my way to the — no, after you.
I make my way to the check— oh christ why not, sure, all five of you, please, AFTER YOU.

I make my way to the checkout.

"Seven-oh-three. Do you have three pennies?"
"Well, let me see here, this wallet is kind of hard to get into…" He's older, buying a pre-made lasagna for one. That always gets me. I look in my own wallet.
"I have three pennies, sir, if you'd like them."
"That's okay."
"No really. Saves you having to dig ninety-seven cents out of that tricky wallet next time."
"Well, thank you very much then." He smiles. I feel momentarily better.

This city can't get me down. Until I step outside and hear a man trying to teach his son how to beg for spare change. "You have to sound like you really need it."

Tell me they're joking, playing some bizarre game. I grit my teeth.

At the coffee place. Nobody looks at me. Three of them, and no one is offering to help. I feel invisible. I will go home and throw down my bag on the chair, so that its contents spill loose and books and tissue packets and lotion and lip gloss and pens topple to the floor. Grit my teeth and make that guttural noise of god I hate this place. I will let negativity wash over me for a moment until he hugs me, offers me hot chocolate, and the warmth creeps back inside.

But now, I am invisible.

"Are you in line?" someone finally says, and someone offers to helps, and the blood starts to flow in my arms again. One more day.

Outside I walk through the gauntlet of Christmas trees leaned up against gallows-like structures, inhaling as deeply as I can. There must be some good spirit left in these dying trees, bedecked with red velvet bows, some goodwill toward all men. I inhale deeper. If it's there, I'll take it with me. If it's there, I'm taking it all with me. Just to make this city of gritted teeth and endless after yous bearable for one more day.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.