How I came to love the subway

There are a lot of train and transit buffs out there. They usually create detailed models of populated towns and mountainous countrysides, and run a set of toy trains around and around while wearing a pinstriped conductor's cap on their heads and a red handkerchief around their necks. They holler "all aboard!" to no one in particular and think about freight trains all day. I was never like this. I never really cared about trains in general, as a kid or as an adult. But somehow, I came to love the New York City subway. Like all great loves, it took me by surprise, subtly immersing me until I realized one day how smitten I was.
My first memories of the subway are not pleasant ones. My family lived on the last stop of the number 7 IRT line, and my parents took me into Manhattan via that line several times. In the 1980's, the subway was in terrible disrepair: train cars and stations covered with graffiti; lights blinking out for minutes at a time; doors popping open unexpectedly while the train was in motion. Announcements were completely inaudible and all maps and signs were totally obscured by spraypaint and marker. You couldn't even see out of the windows because of the whole-car pieces that wrapped the outside of the train. I was scared to death that we would miss our stop or that I would somehow be separated from my parents and lost to the interminable subway forever. I was worried over nothing, because the 7 train runs on its own tracks, and if you somehow get off at the wrong stop, there's nothing to do but stand at the platform or cross to the other side and wait for another train to come and take you to the right place. But I had no idea.
When I was about ten, I had a friend named Brian who loved trains. Actually, he liked anything that ran on rails. He would design his own roller coasters and talk to me about great cross-country train routes. We would hang out by the tracks for the Long Island Rail Road commuter rail near my house and throw rocks at the trains as they passed by. Brian was really into the trains, I enjoyed throwing rocks much more. We would sometimes take the LIRR into Penn Station and play video games, and one time he convinced me to take the Q44 bus to the Bronx Zoo. I guess that was all preparation for his next suggestion: to take the subway into Manhattan and go to the Museum of Natural History. All by ourselves.
He had the whole thing mapped out. We would take the rickety number 7 into Times Square and switch to the uptown K train (it's now replaced by the C). I put my complete trust in him and threw caution to the wind. We were lost almost instantly in the circuitous Times Square transfer station. I remember seeing all of these signs about IRT and IND trains, and I had no idea what was going on. Eventually, we made it to the K train and got on. I recall that it was the kind from the 1950's with the porthole style windows in the doors.
We made it to the Museum of Natural History, paid something like a nickel apiece to get in, and looked at the dinosaur skeletons. Then we went across the street to Central Park and skipped rocks on the lake. It's kind of strange to think about it, here we are, two dumb kids from Queens basically lost in Manhattan when it was supposedly crime-ridden and dilapidated. I have a very fond memory of that day, though, and Brian and I went back to Manhattan several times, either to the Museum of Natural History or--incredibly--we would get out at Times Square to try and see some nudity on peep show posters and maybe get throwing stars and butterfly knives (we never did, though). I enjoyed these trips very much, but I still wasn't really in love with the subway yet. It was just a conveyance to the fun.
In high school, I took the subway downtown (usually the 7 to Roosevelt Ave. - 74th Street, change to the F) to see bands I liked and to hang around. Until they were recently retired, the 7 train used to run these old-style cars called Redbirds that allowed you to cross in between cars. I would hang out in between cars the whole time, smoking pot and just living dangerously. Around this time, my heart was starting to pitter-patter for the subway. Just the 7 train at first, but slowly I started to like other train lines as well. For some reason, I began to hate the F train, and I would take the 7 to Queensborough Plaza and switch to the N train to get downtown. I didn't like taking the 6 train that I could catch at Grand Central Station, even though it also used Redbird cars. I really don't know what criteria I was using for these various subway lines, but it still sticks with me somewhat to this day.
Around the time I was twenty, my mom gave me a book called The Epic of New York City by Edward Robb Ellis, and I got really interested in New York City history. I quickly realized that the story of twentieth century New York City was completely embedded in the construction and growth of the subway. So I got some books about it. I visited the New York City Transit Museum in Brooklyn. I rode the 6 train (ugh) to the last stop, then stayed on the train while it turned around the loop underneath City Hall Park so I could peek at the long-closed flagship station of the subway when it opened in 1904, the City Hall IRT station. I noticed that my mood was different when I took the subway to work in the morning: instead of feeling irritated, my mind would drift back to the things I learned and stories I read and heard about the subway in days gone by. I didn't find myself bothered by train delays; instead, I'd think about the kinds of mechanical problems that can happen to train cars and tracks, and would realize that you can't force a train to move. You just have to wait.
Of course, by this time the subway had undergone a multi-billion dollar overhaul, and differed greatly from the stark memories I had as a child. Still, I had fallen in love with the system, the trains, the mechanics, the fact that New York City as we know it could not exist without the subway--and not the other way around. Even my frightened memories from childhood became tinted with a nostalgic justice. I am not really a subway buff. There are people out there that can rattle off the names of specific cars and the trucks that they ride on, and they can break down the various changes and improvements that were made to the system by year. I can't do any of that. All I can do is love the subway, even though it is incapable of loving me back.

Won't you please lend a hand?

I know it hurts to think about the millions of impoverished people in the world that desperately need your help. It's so much easier to click away from this blog and look at pornography. But that won't make the problem go away. And it won't make the millions of people, like li'l Jethro here, go away either.

There is a country on this planet of ours where millions go hungry, or are without clean drinking water or adequate shelter. Where they receive substandard education, or no formal education at all. A country where tens of millions do not have adequate health care. The worst thing about it is they don't even know how bad they have it. But you know. And you can do something to help.

For a dollar a day--that's the price of one-tenth of a litre of gasoline--you can help these unfortunate souls and save them from themselves. The Christian Children's Fund is a well-respected and long-standing charitable organization, so you know your money will be put to good use. It's time that we, the people of the civilized world, banded together and helped out the less fortunate, be it in Darfur, Ethiopia, or--in this case--America. So please, open your hearts and your wallets, so that Jethro here can learn to bathe himself.

I'm sick of everyone jocking my style

A lot of people look at me as a follower, but really I am a trend-setter. I hate looking like everyone else out there. I guess that's the hip-hop in me, always trying to be original and outdoing everyone else's style. But people bite--oh man, how they bite! It's been going on my whole life, since I was a little kid. I was the first person to wear flip-up sunglasses at my elementary school after I saw Dwayne Wayne wear them on A Different World. I was stylin'! Then that punk Mark Heston shows up the very next week rocking the exact same pair. I almost snatched them right off his face.
The trick to staying ahead of the curve is to wear increasingly more ridiculous clothing each time you change up your style. It also helps if your clothing is outrageously priced. This tends to thin out the herd of people that are daring enough to look fashionable. Like my four-hundred dollar zip-up hoodie with the all-over pink lipsticks pattern. A lot of guys aren't fashionable enough to wear that. Most certainly wouldn't have the fashion sense to wear them with pink patent leather sneakers with the Valentine's heart on the tongue, or the pink velour chaps that say "FRESH" in graffiti lettering down the side. You really have to be an innovator to pull something like that off.
But people still try to jock the look, and you've just got to keep it moving. I'll do whatever it takes to stay fashionable. I've got a line of oversized onesies with rubber duckies and posies that I am just itching to unleash this Spring. I picked them up from a fetish website, so I think that will throw people off the trail for a little while. They also threw in color-coordinated pacifiers, which is dope, in a kind of retro Club Limelight way. There was also a studded dog collar in the package, but I don't think it's going to blend with my new wardrobe. I wish they had sent it last Fall, when I was really cultivating the leather chaps and aviator sunglasses look. It took me forever to grow the proper mustache, but it was well worth it when I saw my friends' jaws drop in surprise. Regular people don't know how to react to the fashionable.
As for what's next, who knows? I'm subject only to my whims and fancies, and my desire to dress differently than everyone else. I can't front, though, sometimes I see people that as fashionable as me, and I get a little jealous. Like Pharell! Did you see what he was wearing at the Video Music Awards last year! Oh, I could have just eaten him up! Uh, in a fashion sense, that is.