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A Jerk in the Subway

Dear Diary:

I was walking up a flight of stairs at the Times Square subway station behind a woman in a black leather jacket, who looked fairly young from behind. She moved, however, painfully slow. I wrung my hands a bit dramatically behind her, then moved over to the stairway on the other side of the handrail and passed her.

At the top of the stairs, I heard a man behind her bleat, “You need to go to the gym.”

“I have a broken leg,” she replied.

The man huffed and puffed past her. He was built like Humpty Dumpty and wearing a little nylon backpack.

I waited for him to apologize or, at the very least, look a little taken aback.

But instead he said, as he turned toward Sixth Avenue: “Yeah, well you should still go to the gym. Work out your other leg.”

With my jaw dropped, I turned back to the woman, expecting her to really lay into the guy. Instead she just continued to go slowly up the stairs with a pathetic hangdog expression. I turned away and trailed behind the mean man for half a block before I lost him in the Midtown commuter shuffle.

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