If you want to teach your children about the consequences of overindulging in alcohol, I recommend you take them on a ride on a subway train on New Year’s Eve. To quote Whodini, the freaks come out at night, and they were all taking public transportation on one of America’s many holidays devoted to getting drunk. And really, kudos to the responsible drunks who knew the condition they would be in after midnight and had the foresight to opt not to drive. Still, it appears that even on public transportation, a designated driver type is needed, if for no other reason other than to keep the rest of the group from getting themselves killed, not by an accident but by the other passengers.
My sister’s and my families attended a New Year's Eve concert, and we had decided that rather than dodging the drunk drivers on the road, we would take the train into the city to see the show and leave our cars in the ‘burbs where they belong. When we left the show a little before one in the morning, we walked to the station but got trapped behind a couple of women in tight short skirts and platform heels. Walking in platform heels is challenging for most women, but after one too many cocktails, these women could barely support themselves on their little foot pedestals. They teetered along, and we watched them, hoping one might fall off her shoe. Instead, the taller of the two with the more muscular legs saw a friend on the street and greeted him. The deep baritone voice that emanated from those painted lips let us know this was no regular gal. My nine year old daughter spent the rest of the walk asking us repeatedly in her loudest voice, “That was a man?” My thirteen year old nephew later would boast how he saw his first tranny on New Year’s Eve.
At the station, we went through the turnstiles and waited by the tracks, clutching our purses and our children close to us. Christmas carols warbled through the tinny speakers, and a group of men who either just got off work or had nowhere else to go were sharing food out of a Styrofoam container. After a short wait, the train arrived and was packed with bowl game fans and late night revelers. It was more than standing room only; it was standing and squeezing and some people sitting on other people’s laps. It was the kind of sardine can packing that makes you think you will be sexually assaulted, mugged, and have your children kidnapped all before the next stop, without you even knowing any of it.
If the look of the other passengers wasn’t enough to scare us, the smell that assaulted us was. Luckily, it was mostly a combination of Axe body spray for men, cigarette smoke, the entire contents of a liquor store, and unwashed sweaty armpits. There was not a single hint of vomit or garbage in the air, and for that, we were very thankful.
Because of the way we had to force our way onto the train, we were not able to maintain a human chain of both families together.
My baby girl found an empty seat next to an intoxicated and disgruntled University of Virginia fan who looked like an upstanding citizen with his gray hair, collegiate tie and button down shirt. Unfortunately, he also had the mouth of a sailor and just enough alcohol in his system to forget you don’t say the F word repeatedly to a nine year old. My other daughter was trapped in the mass of humans that stood and hung onto the railing overhead. She was not confident enough to force a hand hold for herself and instead relied on her fellow standing passengers to prevent her from falling whenever the train lurched into motion or screeched to a stop.
I don’t even know where my husband was, but I found room near one of the doors and held onto a pole that was being shared by a husband and wife that were roughly the same little size. He was clearly drunk, but she was on the wrong side of drunk, the blurry side, the side where anything can happen at any time without warning. I held tightly to the pole with one hand because there was no other way to brace myself when the train moved.
When the doors opened, the wife would ask the new passengers boarding if they were from Ohio. She was from Ohio herself and very proud of it, and felt that it might be possible that every other person out on New Year’s Eve in Atlanta was also from Ohio. She found one person who was and immediately shared her life story up to that very moment. Next to her, a woman in her late twenties stood barefoot on the train. Barefoot. On a subway train. Her toenails were painted lime green. Her evening companions, much like my daughter’s seat mate, were fond of the F word, and of shouting it loudly whenever anyone tried to stuff themselves onto the train.
While I was observing the bare feet, I felt a hand grasp mine around the pole. It belonged to the drunk woman from Ohio, who must have thought my hand belonged to her husband. I flinched and wiggled my fingers in a passive attempt to get her to let go of me, but she was beyond the capacity to interpret subtle signals. I moved my hand lower on the pole. She rested her breast on it.
We swayed while the train stopped, and after someone got off, I was able to move my hand to an overhead railing. Unfortunately, her face was dangerously close to mine, and I could smell the entire contents of her gurgling stomach emanating from her gullet. From the smell of her, it was a big night for Kentucky’s finest sour mash, and I do mean sour. Her eyes were beyond bloodshot and open just a hair, and her head slumped on her neck. She looked like she was going to pass out any second, but my money was on her upchucking before unconsciousness.
Next to the railing, a Hispanic man and his wife were seated, with their two teenage children seated on the opposite side of the train. He too observed the intoxicated woman from Ohio. We made eye contact and he raised his eyebrows at me as if to say take a look at that one. About that time, she leaned over the railing and asked him if she could sit on his lap because she really needed to sit down. “I don’t speak English,” he answered her, in perfect English.
That’s when I decided to move away from the woman from Ohio and her obnoxious short husband. I checked on my older daughter, who looked horrified, or, as my sister said, her eyes got huge and her mouth disappeared. My younger daughter was too exhausted to be disturbed. The next stop was ours, and nothing happened before we disembarked. It was a Christmas miracle, only a week later.
New Year’s Eve night on the subway train was more effective than any Scared Straight program. I bet my kids won’t even want a drop of Manischewitz on Passover after that display. And I want to thank that woman from Ohio. She might not be able to hold her liquor, but she sure did a bang-up job of keeping it down. While I might not win Parent of the Year for taking my kids to a concert on the biggest party night of the year, at least I could educate them on the dangers of intoxication. Scarring them for life is one way to get a lesson to stick, isn’t it?
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