on the right foot...

I always like to start of the semester by making a good, positive first impression on my students by arriving to the first class 20 minutes late. It happened last semester too. It’s never my fault... it’s the damned train, and the fact that there is no “wiggle room” built into my schedule in the morning... I leave the train, hop the subway, walk to work with maybe 5 - 10 minutes to spare. Which means that if the train is 15 minutes late, then *I* am 15 minutes late.

Or in the case of today... even longer.

And the reason for the delay was what they kindly call a “pedestrian accident”. Which of course means that some poor guy got killed by a train. Not MY train... but a train up ahead of ours. Which meant we had to stop for about 10-15 minutes, then BACK UP for about 10 minutes so that we could take another track.

And I always think when I hear about train accidents like that – “Shit, I hope that a train that *I* am on never hits and kills anyone.” Because I know exactly what will happen. Despite the tragic nature of the event, the only thing I’ll feel is irritated and inconvenienced, and then I’ll have to deal with the self-loathing that comes from being disgusted with myself for having such a reaction.

I was right.

D.