After work I got on the uptown 4 train at City Hall. The train got a slow start, stopped at Canal, inched forward a little more, then made a complete stop at Bleecker St at 5:32 PM. For a few minutes, we all stood there, in awkwardness. (Do you ever notice how weird it is when the train stops for five minutes? People feel like they need to talk to each other all of a sudden.)

Anyway, the conductor gets on the speaker to make an announcement that there is a train stopped at Union Square with another directly behind it and we cannot move until the first train moves.

A few minutes later the conductor gets back on the microphone to announce that there is a suspicious package on the train in Union Square.

A few more minutes later he announces that there is also an armed gunman on the train and that we cannot move until the NYPD arrests the person. He adds that “in the neighborhood we used to call this something, but I can’t say right now.”

By 5:47, he gets back on and says, “All other 4 and 5 trains are going to be passing us on the left because they are being rerouted onto the local track- don’t get upset!”

Finally after 5:50 we were moving, after a triumphant “thank god” from the conductor. I’m so glad that I stayed an extra ten minutes at work, or I would have been hanging out with the gunman.