An Honest Handshake

I take the train to school every day. To begin with it was because I couldn’t afford a car, but now that I ostensibly could my reasons have changed. First, if I’m going to say that I’m an environmentalist I had better act like one. Second, I have fallen in love with the train.

There are things to look at on the train. Every day it goes along the same tracks, but every day is different. There are a few staples to my diet of observance – I try not to miss the sign that says “Justice Auto”, and I always look at the river as we cross. Sometimes I run into a friend or a long-lost friend-turned-acquaintance on the train and chat the whole way, or revel in the awkwardness. Usually I listen in on many more cell phone conversations than I would like to, and I try to decide which foreign languages my fellow travelers are speaking (as a linguist, this is actually a very diverting game). Some days are shocking, like the day that our train stopped very violently, very suddenly, and whispers spread throughout the commuting ranks that someone had been hit. Among sirens and tension we slowly pulled away, passing an accident scene on the next track over. One of those heart-in-your-throat moments, I couldn’t tear my eyes away while I listened to a woman phone her friend and complain that she would be twenty minutes late.

One afternoon a few years ago I was listening to Radiohead and watching the tracks sweep by (this was before I realized how much school-unrelated reading I could get done on the train). Somewhere before downtown, a man got on the train and I started paying very close attention.

The man shuffled in and sat down opposite another university-bound girl. He smelled of alcohol and experience. The entire train car stiffened unanimously, for this man was Native (or in Canadian, First Nations), and he had been drinking. Every stereotype in every brain put a check in a box marked “reaffirmed”. Perhaps a second box was filled when he started asking for money.

Girl Across From Him couldn’t help him, she had no spare change - nor could Man Across From Me. But I, I had change. At the time I was working as a non-corporate barista, meaning that I often ran out of quarters for customers. My tip jar became my source for change, and my wallet was literally weighed down with nickels and dimes as I bought quarters from myself. I hadn’t emptied my coin purse into the jar in my room since the previous night’s shift, so I gave the man some change and we shook hands and exchanged names. I don’t remember his name now, but I do remember that handshake.

Soon after we introduced ourselves, My Friend noticed someone staring at him from across the car. He was hurt, and angered by the stares, and stood up to threaten his observer. Girl Across From Him excused herself – we had reached her stop. I watched her get off and quickly walk to the next car up to get back on the train. Meanwhile, The Observer pulled out every version of “I don’t want to fight you, man” that English syntax can possibly generate until My Friend was mollified. He sat back down for a minute or so before walking to the other end of the car to ask for change there.

I remember thinking that the people at that side of the car seemed to have some sort of secret, shared intelligence that they weren’t telling our side. They had looked smug, and I secretly triumphed in their manifest discomfort at the approach of My Friend. Soon enough, I discovered the source of their self-satisfaction. At our next stop, two security men entered our train car and escorted My Friend quietly off onto the platform, telling him that he was a disturbance. The far side of the car had called security.

The doors closed, we pulled away, and everyone relaxed. I regret to include myself in that everyone. I spent the rest of my trip thinking about those two moments, the moment of tension and the moment of release, that we had all experienced together. What was it that was being disturbed by My Friend? I decided, as I looked around the train, that it was our middle-class status quo, the purposeful delusions of suburbia. We all had money, food, family, friends, luxuries, and plenty of reasons to wish away all the unpleasant bits of life. My Friend had disturbed our comfortable slumber, and we wanted him gone. We called security and asked them to fix the crack we had noticed in our veneer, and we weren’t pleased until they had. I was so ashamed of myself.

There must be more to life than the delirious preservation of a facade. I know there was more to My Friend than my very limited and stereotype-ridden knowledge had allowed me to believe. I wonder what was in The Observer’s look, what exactly prompted Girl Across From Him’s lie, and how My Friend spent my change. Did our handshake stick with him like it did with me? I wonder where he is now. Is he working? Does he have a place to stay? Our city is expensive. Is he making ends meet?

Since that day I’ve realized that the people I respect most in this life are the ones who dare to live in the fringes, to unite disparate worlds in their single human experience. Regrettably, my church experience has seemed to more closely represent the smug train car full of glossy half-truths. When someone’s hard reality comes our way, we want to call security and shut the doors. We want to believe that there is an easy answer for every disturbance. My Friend taught me many things. For one, there are no easy answers. I didn’t feel comfortable when he was there, but I didn’t feel better once we had removed him. Rather, I felt worse. My Friend also taught me how quickly The Observer can wound the observed. I know that while he himself didn’t notice Girl Across From Him fudge her way onto another more peaceful train car, many others did and were wishing they had done the same. And most of all, I was shown how an honest handshake with reality could change the course of my life, and set me to challenging the assumptions that I had so docilely accepted for so long.

It took a real experience with a crack in the veneer to make me realize the failures of the veneer as a whole. To me, My Friend was the most beautiful person on the train that day, but he was a flaw in the image we had crafted so we wanted nothing to do with him. How much we miss, and how quickly we injure and forget. It all reminds me of the big warning written with faded permanent marker on my favourite vegetable cellar door in the world: Do NEVER leave this door open.