The Kindness of Conductors

Sunday morning I was on the way back from a family gathering in another state. I had traveled up by bus on Saturday to visit my cousin who lives in Northeastern State Where Pilgrims Landed, in order to celebrate her daughter's sixteenth birthday. The bus ride takes over four hours, but on Sunday, I went back by train, which is much quicker, partly because my cousin was nice enough to drive about an hour and a half to take me to the northernmost stop of the commuter line that goes directly to Manhattan. We got up early to make the drive--I had to be back in the city by early afternoon because I was going to another party on Sunday, a barbecue to celebrate the birth of a friend's baby. So when we got to the station we were both pretty sleepy, especially since we had been up late the night before with the teenagers. My cousin said good-bye and I made my way up to the platform. I saw a ticket machine and thought I had better buy a ticket so that I didn't get charged extra on the train. I put some money in the machine, followed all the directions as best as I could in my half-awake state, and grabbed a white piece of paper that landed in the bottom tray behind the plastic door.

The train came, I found a seat and settled myself into it. Probably I was sleeping already by the time the conductor came around. I roused myself when I heard, "Tickets, please," pulled the little white piece of paper--cardboard really--out of my wallet, and handed it to the conductor, a youngish, well-scrubbed-looking chap.

He looked puzzled.

"This is your receipt," he said. "It's not your ticket."

"Oh," I said. "That was the only thing I saw in the machine when I bought the ticket."

"So you didn't take the ticket," he said.

"No," I said, a little quaveringly. I added, "I'm really sorry."

He responded, quickly, "Well, it's no big deal. Except somebody got a free ride off you."

Then he punched the receipt and gave it back to me.

I held onto the receipt carefully because I knew I would have to show it again when I changed trains at a station called, enigmatically, "Southeast."

This time when the conductor came around I had my explanation ready as I handed him my pathetic excuse for a ticket.

"This is all I have," I said. "When I bought the ticket in the machine I forgot to take the ticket, I only took the receipt."

"I'm really sorry," I added again.

The conductor, an older man with a gray mustache and that jaunty air conductors sometimes have, looked at the piece of paper I gave him.

"Where did you get on?" he asked, which seemed like his polite way of saying, "What the hell are you talking about?" The piece of paper obviously made no sense to him.

I told him where I got on, and then his face cleared. "Oh, so he punched this," he said, reading the story of the ticket in the punched-out-hole language only conductors can understand.

"Yes," I said.

Then he took out his little ticket-puncher and proceeded to punch my pseudo-ticket himself.

"You get a frown for losing your ticket," he said.

I said, "Oh, I can stand that, I guess," thinking he meant that he was going to frown at me. I thought it was a cute thing for him to say. Also I was relieved that I wasn't going to be thrown off the train or asked to pay for the ticket again.

Then he handed me back my little cardboard receipt, and I saw that he had punched in the features of a face--eyes, nose, and, yes, lots of little holes all together to make a mouth turned upside down in a frown.