I love the subway; those veins and arteries that carry us to outerboro friends, family and fun. Whenever I see young couples on the train with that settled in, “We’ve been here for a while” look, I’m reminded of my first real relationship and how much of it I owe to the MTA.

He was from Queens, I was from Manhattan and we were attending the very prestigious high school downtown that I can’t bring myself to name drop anymore. Now, in the good old pre-9/11 days, I could leave my roost at 86th as late as 720am and cover half of Manhattan in enough in time for my 8am class (ah, the unfortunately named “Zero Period”). My boyfriend, however, was not so lucky - he lived in what we called a “two-fare zone”; a walk to a bus to a train. I think his total ride was about 90minutes or more each way, and he had Zero Period, too.

Add his super long commute to his over-protective mother, and we had absolutely no time outside of school to spend together. Now, while the programming gods smiled on us for the entire year BEFORE we got together (five class periods together, including a whopping double period AND a lunch), we couldn’t find each other enough afterwards. And so began my creative trips home - I took the E hither, the C thither, the F yon, all to steal more time with my sweetie. A few times, I even went all the way to Queens, claiming to my suspicious that I’d fallen asleep on the train; for a while, I’m sure she suspected smack.

So thank you MTA, for teaching me everything I know about inter-boro love !

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5. Commute from Hell on the L