Dear Diary:

It was 8:45 a.m. and we had been waiting for the Manhattan-bound A train (or the C, or the F, at this point) for 15 minutes. It was one of those rainy, late-winter mornings, and the crowd on the platform at Jay Street/MetroTech in Brooklyn was growing in size and turbulence.

Finally an A train came crawling into the station. The train was already packed, but we were desperate and running late, so into the wet, steamy train car we squeezed. Suddenly, a man who had the luxury of a seat bolted up from it and ran out the doors just as they were closing.

The two people closest to the seat, a man and a woman, made a move at the same time, then stopped mid-lunge and looked at each other. The man was older and had a cane, and the young woman was rather pregnant.

The whole train car held its breath. Who was more deserving? Would there be a fight? Why isn’t someone else standing up?

Finally, as the train started to lurch out of the station, the man with the cane insisted, “Pregnancy beats cane! Pregnancy beats cane!”

The whole train started to laugh and applaud, shrugging and shaking our heads at one another. After a few back-and-forths, the pregnant woman made the man with the cane take the seat, because she was getting off at the next station. But we witnesses didn’t stop laughing until probably around 14th Street.

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