Anecdotal Evidence

So yesterday was Friday the 13th (by the way, happy Bastille Day!). Will wrote a well thought out, if mildly ridiculous, post on the utter stupidity of Friday the 13th superstition. What can I do but agree?

And yet, there is anecdotal evidence to support the claim that Friday the 13th CURSED!!!

That would've worked better if you'd read it with the "ed" getting it's own syllable, Shakespeare-style. Friday the 13th is curséd!!!

I got on a NYC-bound train, and was pleased to realize that it was the express train. "Ooh," thought I naively, "I will get there early!" My next thought was "wow this is a lot of highschoolers packed into one train".

At Metropark, the train stopped and waited for police to arrive. The police yelled at the highschoolers in my car for a few minutes, then left. Delay: 10 minutes.

Somewhere in North Jersey, the train stopped again, this time in the middle of nowhere. There was an announcement, a train had broken down in a tunnel, we were waiting for it to be cleared. Delay: 15 minutes.

Just before Newark Airport, a pack of conductors came charging down the aisle, and I overheard "there they are, they'll know who did it". Then we got to wait at Newark Penn Station (not to be confused with New York Penn Station... seriously, who came up with these names?) for the police to arrive again. This time they escorted one of the kids off the train. Apparently he'd somehow defiled the train's bathroom... I guess (I hope) it was with something run-of-the-mill like vomit. Delay: 20 minutes.

So finally I get to Penn Station (the NYC version), at which point I call my friend to ask where we'll meet. "Well, I'm in a Starbucks." That doesn't exactly narrow things down, does it. "I'm on 42nd Street". Um, Penn Station is at 34th street... what the hell? "I'm at Grand Central Station".

My friend, being from not-NYC, had taken a train in to Grand Central Station. The fact that I was coming in by train must've gotten translated into "the same train station I came in to". An honest mistake.

Okay, I'll just hop on the subway up to Grand Central Station. Except, Grand Central is also (in fact, is primarily) a bus terminal. I, being from not-NYC, translated "Grand Central" into "bus"... which meant that I hopped on the C train up to the Port Authority, almost a mile away from Grand Central. I'd wandered around the Port Authority for 10 minutes, looking in vain for the landmarks my friend was describing. Seriously, an honest mistake!

Okay, I'll just hop on the subway to Grand Central. Oops, it doesn't exist. Taxi!!!

About 2 hours after we were supposed to meet, I finally found my friend in Grand Central Station. We had Thai. It was delicious.