Don't Make Him Take The Commuter Train Alone Day!
He's been on that train a thousand times before. And he promised his mother you'd be coming home with him for Thanksgiving, that you'd help him endure the stench of rotting flesh billowing up from the seats, the mothers beating their children half to death, the businessmen screaming jovial obscenities back and forth across the car in between sips from their Miller Lite King Kans.
"I'm sorry," you tell him. "I don't like you enough to meet your mother."
Look at his face for God's sake. That's the face of a man about to have a family of nine crushing in around him. He can already feel the gum on his shoes, the soda spilled seeping through the seat of his pants, the punch to his eyes he'll receive from an unattended toddler.
"I just don't feel like we talk enough," you say.
But what about the ticket-takers? He's scared of the ticket-takers. They slap at his feet when he puts them on the seats. One of them even called him Mary once.
"There's no real spark is all," you say. "I don't know if there ever was."
But sometimes people on the train bring their Roy Rogers chicken meals with the processed stench fills up the car like a fog rolling in.
"Have a nice Thanksgiving," you say. You notice how the blood drains away from his face. It's not your fault. He's just remembering what it's like to share a three-seater with a dry-humping teenaged couple. He's feeling a little tender in the stomach.
Happy Don't Make Him Take The Commuter Train Alone Day!