Grand Central Phenomenon

I was told a few weeks ago that I had finally gotten the complete New Yorker experience. So, what was this culminating event that pushed me into knowing the greatest city in the world? Well, it was getting caught in a Grand Central back up of course. That's right, on a fateful Saturday afternoon electrical wires blew out near Greenwich, NY leaving GCT without any trains in or out. It's 4PM when I find out the wonderful news. And, at this point I really thought it was wonderful news because this particular Saturday was the day of the consolation World Cup game. Grand Central being so user friendly had a television set up for all to watch the game. So with this delay I was going to catch the whole second half of the game. I was grateful for the delay for about 45 minutes. What can be better than a huge group of people hanging out enjoying the beautiful game together? Little did I know this was just the beginning. It's now 5PM, the game long over (an exciting match resulting in a German 3-2 win over Uruguay) I'm sitting on the floor against a wall of the Main Concourse. About an hour into the fiasco I begin to notice the first step of what I've come to call the Grand Central Phenomenon.

This first step is actually not much of a phenomenon in itself. It's actually what anyone would naturally expect from people being so inconvenienced. I began to see a commonality among the many faces--annoyed, disgruntled, even angry expressions. Accompanied by exasperated comments all sounding pretty much like "Of course this would happen today, when I have to be back for (insert important thing here)." As the minutes and hours progressed though, the important things began to take on broader and broader definitions. 45 minutes in, these things were "picking up my children from the babysitter" or "making a business meeting." These statements said in a disappointed or upset voice. After 2 hours of waiting, important things turned into "I was supposed to wash my favorite shirt today!" and "Man, I needed to pick up apples when I got home, now it's too late."

Apart from these perpetual complainers an amazing thing began to happen. At 6PM, two hours into the terminal crash, I saw people starting to talk to complete strangers. Boredom drives people to strange things. And instead of the people banning together in anger storming the GCT employees, they began to calm down and take things in stride, myself included. The inconvenience turned into a great way to meet new people. And I discovered New York is actually the melting pot (or is it a tossed salad now?) they say it is. I met a student from Duke University (as hard as it was to overcome that rivalry) traveling to New Haven, a Brussels native visiting the city for the weekend, a Londoner who had moved to the states recently, two German students teaching in the US, and a newly-wed couple with a baby on the way.

It's 9PM and I'm finally en route, sitting on a packed train, and I'm amazed at this phenomenon at Grand Central. Instead of people becoming increasingly frustrated and hostile, silences and walls were broken and people became kinder and friendlier. Seats were given up, life stories were told, and real interest was taken in others. Why do bad things happen? I don't know, but if nothing better comes of them, people really do come together because of them.