The Night Train

People are still wishing me a Happy New Year. What is the cutoff date where Happy New Year is no longer an acceptable greeting? I say as soon as the New Years hangover is gone, the New Years greetings should cease.....anyway....happy Monday to all.

There are certain "rights of passage" that all of us experience that bridge our teenage years to our young "adult" years. For some it may be a first kiss, a first sexual encounter, a first drink, a first cigarette, or all of the above. Here on Long Island, one of the "rights of passage" is your first drunken train ride back to Long Island after partying in NYC all night. It is something all of us here in suburbia have experienced. There's definitely something interesting about a train ride from NYC to Long Island between the hours of 1am and 4am on a weekend night/morning.

I know many people who have been so drunk on the train that they have passed out and have woken up in the rail yards early on a Sunday Morning. Then there are those who get off 10 stops before their's because they are too drunk to understand the conductor's voice on the train's PA system. There are also those who lose track of time because they party too hard and miss the "last" trains to Long Island at or around 3am and have to sit it out until 6am in Penn Station with very little to do but drink some more. These are some of the things the average Long Islander has seen or encountered over the years after a Friday or Saturday Night of partying in the Big Apple.


A Long Island Railroad Train Heads to Long Island as Night Turns into Day 

One Saturday, L-Ha and I ventured into NYC for some dinner and drinks. We hopped an 8pm train from Mineola and a quick 45 minutes later, we were in the heart of the greatest city in the world. We jumped in a cab and headed to a nice restaurant/bar/lounge in Chelsea over on 10th ave and 17th street. A really cool place with some great music, food, and drink. Not to mention the good company. After quite a few hours, quite a few drinks, plenty of conversation, and a nice dinner, we decided to take the party back to Long Island and continue there. We just made it back to Penn Station to catch train that was leaving for Mineola. We found our seats and were chatting. A few minutes later, three young ladies took the seats directly in front of us. I looked over to L-Ha and said, let's see what these girls are up to tonight. So, after a few wise cracks and funny remarks we got these girls talking about what they were doing in NYC and what kind of trouble they were getting themselves into that night.

The three girls were cool, let's call them sober girl, birthday girl, and pirogie. Sober girl was the youngest and the most "innocent" of the three. Birthday girl was indeed celebrating her 20th birthday that night, and pirogie was the wild one of the three. Well, birthday girl was drinking rum that she had in a Poland Spring bottle which she poured into her Haggen-Daz ice cream shake, pirogie was trashed, and sober girl was along for the ride. L-Ha and I had a real nice buzz going from our night of drinking. I decided to start my career as a buzzed train psychic. I started by trying to guess facts about each girl's life. First the obvious, their ages, their nationalities, birthdays, jobs, and all that. It got as far as how many siblings, pets, what their father's occupations were and much much more. Well, this back and forth banter continued for the entire 45 minute train ride. We all were guessing facts about each other's lives, laughing loud, and being silly. As I looked around the train car, I could see that others were getting into the game and finding it quite funny. Over the 45 minutes we were all somewhat surprised about how much we got right about each other, but most of all how way off we were on most of what we assumed about each other. At one point, I was pegged as a 28 year old British construction worker. Quite hilarious.

I think the thing I got the most out of this silly game was how the average person makes assumptions about other people and their lives solely based on their looks. It's only when you get to chat with someone that you really get to know who they are. Some of their answers were the complete opposite of what me and L-Ha thought about them. In addition, many of the assumptions the girls made about L-Ha and I were way off. It was a fun game that passed the time and gave us all a good laugh, but in an odd way I think it taught us all something.

My parting words to the girls were, "Bored at the Beach." They were like "What????" I said google Bored at the Beach and you just may see a little story about yourselves. They giggled and wished L-Ha and I well and we got off at our stop and continued our night of fun. Not that L-Ha and I are old by any means, but we have both done the drunken city thing too many times to even count. It was fun seeing those three girls experiencing their "right of passage."