New York City subway

Metropolitan Diary: Boarding

Dear Diary:

My fiancé and I rode our bikes to Manhattan from Brooklyn last summer to meet some friends for an outdoor restaurant dinner.

As dinner ended, it began to rain — hard. We couldn’t bike back home, so we walked through the downpour to the closest train station.

Drenched, we carried our bikes down to the platform, where we saw a group of teenagers. They were a little rowdy but harmless and waiting for an uptown train, which pulled in just as the lights of the train we were waiting for started to shine down the tunnel.

Just then, without the teenagers noticing, a skateboard that belonged to one of them slipped and rolled onto the tracks. As the uptown train’s doors opened, the board’s owner turned around to grab it, only to see it where it had fallen with a train bearing down.

The teen hesitated. He was clearly considering going onto the tracks as his friends held open the doors and yelled at him to leave the board where it was.

With only seconds to spare, a transit worker who had witnessed the entire turn of events yelled from across the way and pulled out a walkie-talkie. The downtown train screeched to a halt a few feet in front of the skateboard.

The conductor put on a neon vest, swung open the train’s front door and hopped down onto the tracks. He grabbed the skateboard and handed it to the boy, who sprinted to the uptown train. His friends were still pushing against the closing doors.

— Elizabeth Blue Guess