Commute Observations - Thursday, January 26, 2017

I work from home on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and every Thursday, I go to my office in Cambridge for coaching and team meetings. I could drive to the office, but I hate traffic. Instead, I drive from Randolph to the Braintree Station, ride from Braintree to Porter Square (which you can see on the map is pretty much beginning to end), and then walk for 15 minutes to my office.

As I'm reading more about novel writing, I see that I need to work on being more descriptive about the characters' physical attributes. To practice that, I've decided to blog about what I notice about other passengers during my trip. Sometimes I dread my commute, but if I drove, I wouldn't be able to people watch. I'll do my best to do what I've seen Sherlock Holmes do :).

Here's what I noticed today:

A middle-aged White woman, sitting pigeon-toed with white and pink sneakers, holding a tote bag with frayed handles. She wore glasses and was mostly looking down at her phone in her lap. Her dark brown hair was pulled into a neat ponytail, and she typed methodically with her index finger. I didn't notice the color of her coat, what was written on her tote bag, what style/color her glasses were, what type of phone she had, or which hand she typed with. I'll try to pay more attention to those details next time.

A Black woman, maybe late 30s, sleeping, her hands folded as if in prayer, securing her purse with her folded hands, and she was wearing double hoods (a blue sweater with black and blue frayed hood edge under a black winter coat with black faux fur on the hood). Her skin was a beautiful shade of brown like Hershey's chocolate, and her nose and full lips were the only parts of her face that were visible under her hoods. Her boots were black, long, laced, and they stopped under her knee. Her feet were crossed at the ankle. I think she wore jeans. 

A White woman, maybe mid-20s sitting with her legs crossed at the knee, her right hand supporting her forehead as if worried or stressed, first staring out of the train window, and then sleeping, her long, knit black scarf thrown around neck carelessly. She had thin pouty lips and long, messy brown hair. She wore a mini-skirt and thick black stockings that seem to have been washed many times.

A middle-aged White man, balding, hair combed forward with a little too much oil on it, quickly removing his foldable black ear warmers after finishing a text. He closed his eyes, with his backpack between his feet. The top front of his black shoes were significantly worn. I wonder how that happened?

An Asian boy, maybe 12, wearing a blue (somewhere between azure and Persian blue) puffy coat, a matching water bottle in the side pocket of his backpack, reading the Metro. Hmm. Is he doing that because he wants to, or because his teacher wants him to keep up with current events? One sneakered foot overlapped the other slightly. He pinched his nostrils to keep his nose from running. The mom in me wanted to pass him a tissue from my bag. 

I wanted to observe more, but when we got to Andrew Station, I think, a flood of people came in, and it was hard to really see anyone anymore.

If someone was recording their observations about me this morning, I think it would look something like:  Middle-aged Black woman, long dark brown locks, wearing a winter coat the color of green grass, jeans, and Skechers. Looking down at her iPhone, earbuds plugged in, eyes closed.