Dec 2025
I always feel like I am in sync with the world when the train doors close just after I board. Today, the elation was short-lived.
I glanced at my watch. I had just boarded the 8:41am westbound train from New York’s Penn Station stopping in Maplewood, NJ, my beautiful little township in Essex County. It was 8:30am. It was eerily quiet. No one else was on the train.
It was quiet on the platform too. It was rush hour, or the tail end of it, but I was travelling against it. That is, I was on an outbound train in the morning when everyone else was headed inbound, riding with the shift workers and those doing a mid-week walk-of-shame. There’s practically no one around on the busiest of these days.
Uh oh, I thought. This is not good.
I looked outside. My train was boarding on track 9 I thought to myself. What track is this train on? Sure enough, I was aboard the idle train on Track 10, across the platform.
Surely I can’t be the only person on the train. I thought to myself. I began walking to the east, to the back of the train. I got through four cars. I saw no one outside, there was no one inside. I was the only person on this train.
At each door there is a panel with red and green buttons on it. I went to a door and pushed the green one. Nothing. I pushed the red one. Nothing. I pushed them both, still nothing.
I saw a guy walking by in a suit, I banged on the window. He looked at me, confused, and kept walking. I banged again. He stopped, looked at me again, and walked away.
This fucken guy I thought. What was I? Planning to mug him by calling a conductor? I laughed under my breath. I keep pacing around, but I figure I have a better chance of being discovered if I stay in one place, by one door. Someone was getting on this train eventually.
Another guy walks by in a construction vest carrying a toolkit. I bang again. He looks at me, holds up a finger, and sets his toolkit down. He pulls some electronic contraption out of his pocket and waves it over something outside the door I can’t see. The door opens. I walk out.
“Thanks!” I say. “I was on the wrong fucken train.”
He smiles, silently waving an acknowledgment as he continues towards the front of the train.
I was just saved by Train Jesus I thought to myself. Praise be!
By this time, there were conductors in sight, a group of three walked up to me.
“It happens” one of them said with a smile.
“Are you going to Dover?” came the next question in a soft voice, with a thick New Jersey accent. I turned around to face a truly gorgeous woman in a New Jersey Transit conductor’s uniform. “Yes” I replied, trying to keep my cool. “So is this train” she said with a smile as she jerked her head towards the open door for the train on track 9, with people on it and everything.
I thanked her and boarded, she stepped on behind me. “Wait,” she said, “I want to show you something.” I stopped and turned to face her.
She pointed to a red lever to the left of the door, just below waist level. “Wait, let me close the door first so I can show you.” She pulled out a keyring and plunged a key into a panel and turned it; the door swished shut. “See this lever?” she said, pointing to it. “If you ever get on the wrong train again, pull this lever down, that unlatches it, and you can then just pull the door open.”
She pulled the door open, stepped off the train, beckoned me to step off behind her, and then pushed it back closed until there was an audible click. “Push it until you hear the click and no one will ever be the wiser” she stopped to look up at me with a smile, ” and this works even if the train has no power.” She then whipped the same little electronic device Train Jesus had, about the size of a deck of cards, and waved it over something to open the door again.
“You are the best!” I replied, still a bit struck by her appearance.
“Oh, you say that to all the crew” she said with a wink, “but it happens all the time. Don’t sweat it.”
I turned to go find a seat.
This fucken state. These fucken people.
The best.