Another remembered story… last summer while riding LIRR, I was hanging out in the outdoor waiting area outside Northport station, waiting for my friend to pick me up. I was sitting in an end seat, and the seat to my left had some trash that some slob left behind. A Hispanic man walks up to me, moves the trash, and sits down next to me. Mind you, there were plenty of other open seats, he just chose to sit next to me, despite the fact that he even had to clean off the seat.

In his hand, the man carried an Abercrombie and Fitch bag, the kind with the shirtless guys and a girl that I probably wouldn’t want to know in real life. He holds it up, points to the picture and says “Haha! Look at these guys!” He proceeds to pull out the contents of the bag, a statue of an eagle, which he had made, or at least painted. I was sort of not paying much attention, thinking “okay dude, whatever” and looking desperately for my friend to save me from this nutjob.

Of course, knowing my luck, the situation got worse before it got better. The man began to make comments about my clothing, noticing that I had a hole in the knee of my jeans. He then reached over and began to touch my knee. In retrospect, I probably should have punched the guy. Better yet, I should have gotten the hell away from him long before. But being the nicer person that I was I got my ass up as fast as possible away from that damn nutjob.

Alright, so from all my posts about pigeons, you may think that I have a little bit of a thing for them. Not really. They are just amusing animals. Something about the way they bob their heads back and forth… which they do even faster and in an even more amusing way when you just happen to be chasing them. And with little kids, and little idiots (like myself), it is a much more likely scenario to see a human chasing a pigeon. But one incredibly amusing day, I definitely saw the opposite. I have a coworker that apparently has a phobia of pigeons. He normally doesn’t take the train from White Plains, he takes the bus to Stamford to pick up a New Haven line train… so he doesn’t normally hang out in the White Plains train station with my friends and I. On this fateful day however, he had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, the upstairs hallway on the way to the bathrooms was being patrolled by a pigeon looking for handouts. My coworker cowered against the wall, and pointed to the pigeon. Another coworker said “Oh just go by him, he won’t do nothin’ to ya…” And so he timidly stepped forward… and the pigeon launched into the air, and flew straight at him. In truly hilarious fashion, he screamed, and ran the rest of the way to the bathroom, as fast as he could. He may be ridiculed about this day from now until the end of time.

Am I the only person that still gets confused and refers to Southeast station as its former name: Brewster North? Just wondering…