Subway stories

I was waiting for the train tonight and a man dropped his cell phone; it bounced on the concrete edge of the platform and went sailing down into the track. He put down his bag and started making a move like he was going to jumped down on the tracks to retrieve it. Some people were cheering him on, and others (like me) were screaming, "No, no!" This particular station has a curved entrance, so you don't really see an oncoming train until it's pretty close. Luckily he paused, and looked up and saw one of the MTA workers on the other side of the gate, so walked over to talk to him. Within seconds, a train was pulling into the station. "See," I said and the guy said, "That phone is my lifeline!" We assured him that it was between rails, not likely to have been crushed, and that his best bet was to wait for the MTA worker's help. Sure enough, the MTA guy acted like it was just another day at the office, and was just nodding to him and watching where he pointed as the doors closed.

Part of me thought of staying behind just to see the end of the story. I want to think they have a long claw-like tool, like the kind you see in stores with hard to reach high shelves, and that the phone was retrieved within minutes of our leaving the station. But the other part of me was in a hurry to get home, spurred on even more by the "oh my god I almost saw a man jump in front of a train" adrenalin.

* * *

Reebok has a new series of ads in the subway. Unfortunately, at no time is "Reebok" mentioned; the assumption is that people know the brand from the logo and a simple "Rbk." I'm not sure that their brand identity is that ingrained. Anyway, the ads are cryptic in that "we're-so-hip-you-can-only-get-this-if-you're-as-hip-as-we-are" way. But there was one ad that read something like, "Eveything you do..." EVEYTHING. The first time I read it, I thought, well, maybe it's some kind of inside joke? A pun I'm too un-hip to get? Like they run so fast, they can leave out letters like "R" and that's okay?

Today, a week later, same ads, but now it's "Everything." EVERYTHING.

Hard to believe that an ad campaign from a major company can have so prominent a typo. But apparently it did.