Stranger advice

The beauty of being able to talk to random strangers for a living is that you get a heck of a lot of unsolicited advice from sources you wouldn't otherwise peg as purveyors of truth. And because you're constantly asking questions, you start to adopt a "talk to me" expression on your face that invites even the most seemingly unfriendly faces to spill their secrets and tell you the story of their lives.

I wonder if this is a phenomenon that happens often to writers or journalists in the City. It's been happening on a pretty regular basis throughout the past few months, and I think it's kind of a fantastic thing, but sometimes it's more than that. Just last night, as I was sitting on the subway on my way home to Astoria, a man in a three-piece suit sat down next to me.

Two guys hopped onto the train just as the doors were about to close, looking pretty flustered. One of them asked me for directions to Penn station, but with my headphones in I didn't hear him the first, second or third time he asked. And then when I did hear him, I didn't understand what he was saying in his flustered state.

So the three-piece man (hereafter known as the TPM) got him to calm down and gave very detailed directions not once, not twice, but three times to make sure that he understood where to go. After the two men got off at the next stop to switch stations, thanking them, the TPM turned to me and said:

"Those can be dangerous, you know."

"I'm sorry, what can be?"

"The headphones. There's been a series of robberies from passengers either sleeping or zoning out with headphones this past month. Especially on the F train. So make sure you watch your things."

"Right, thanks," I said, smiling at the nicety of a man giving helpful, unsolicited advice on the subway.

"I think those guys were trying to take your things, actually. They were just checking to make sure you couldn't hear them."

Thank you, TPM. Thank you. That could have been bad. HA.