Timing is everything in life. Just after riding the TTC home this afternoon from a wonderful
concert which was part of the Toronto Summer Music Festival, I was asked if I would like to
write the blog today. The timing felt right as I had just experienced a highly entertaining
incident on the subway that I will try to capture here. After boarding the train at the Bloor
station, I watched a young man race at the last minute to board the train with a coffee table
he had clearly just purchased. He quickly put the table on the train but then raced back
onto the platform to retrieve his scooter; however, in that very short time, the doors to the
train closed, leaving man and scooter on the platform and coffee table riding solo on our
TTC train! All of us who had witnessed this scene looked surprised and then we all
simultaneously burst out laughing. The brainstorming then started as we stared at this table
in our midst: How could we solve this man’s dilemma….do we take the table off at the next
stop and hope the owner gets on the train following us and sees it on the platform of the
next station? We all agreed that was risky, not knowing what the owner was going to do.
Do we call the TTC Lost and Found Dept. in the hopes that the owner was also doing the
same? How did he ever get the table and scooter onto the TTC platform in the first place? I
and my immediate neighbour on the train spent the next two stops trying to anticipate what
the table-owner’s next steps might be, not reaching any conclusion. However, during our
chat my neighbour regaled me with a story about her 3-year-old son getting on an elevator
in Bangkok and the mother watched as the doors closed quickly before she could join him!
(solution to be revealed on another cemetery walk). I had only one stop left with my new
TTC friend to reciprocate with my story of when I received word at work one day that my
11-year-old son had been beaten up in the Davisville subway station. (full story also to be
revealed on another cemetery walk). Both stories had happy endings, by the way. All this is
to say that I have no idea whether the young man today was ever reunited with his table
but the incident provided no end of entertainment for so many of us. I was sorry to have to
get off the train after only two stops as the rather jolly group of fellow TTC travelers was just getting going...
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