Jack Tame: All aboard the love train

Opinion

The Uptown 6-Train does not usually allow for an especially pleasant journey home. "We're like f***ing sardines in here," screamed an elderly woman boarding at 51st St. With a bonnet, scarf and a stick, she could almost have been your nana.

"I wanna f***ing sit down! Mooooove!"

Yeah. Almost.

Even in a city known for its curt and colourful lexicon, this was peculiar. People shuffled about to make room as we lurched up Lexington Ave. And although the woman was perfectly correct in her observation - a journey on the 6-Train is often made in someone else's armpit - as we waited for her next ejaculation, the rest of us made eyes and silently agreed there might be an underlying medical reason for our co-passenger's charm.

"F***ing sardines!" she screamed from her seat. And I mean, screamed.

At 77th St the woman got off. And as the doors closed and the train pulled out, the operator unlocked his little booth at the end of the carriage and removed an earplug. He squeezed by a few passengers and started talking to the woman next to me.

I assumed the staff had probably received a report about the unruly elderly woman and he had come to corroborate the facts and make sure she had disembarked.

But after 30 seconds of conversation I was caught by something he said.

"Yeah, I know what that's like. I've been through two divorces myself, actually."

The passenger was blushing and grinning. The train operator asked about her children.

He excused himself and returned to his booth to open the doors at the next stop. But a couple of stations later, he shimmied out once more.

"Here," he said, before the 40-odd passengers in the sardined 6-Train carriage.

"Only in case. Only in case."

He handed the woman a small square of paper that had a handwritten phone number on it. "You really do have an amazing smile."

She blushed again as he returned to his work, then shrugged her shoulders and beamed.

New York, huh.

Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB Saturdays, 9am-midday