Waiting time is mostly dead time. Dream time. Listening to the voices that speak to you from inside your head time. It is in anticipation that the train will eventually come and take you someplace else. You can stand and wait or sit down and wait. If you sit down, etiquette requires that you sit as far from another person as possible, unless the only open seats are between two people, in which case you have to decide if it is worth filling that space and having some stranger seated on either side of you and if that is going to be OK or not while you wait. In other words, you have to make a judgment call on the fly. You have to quickly assess the people that you will be sitting next to as to whether they look a) sane, b) hygienic, c) non-violent and d) not a religious nut. The light is the subway system is not good, so everyone looks a little off anyway. A little jaundiced. The air is bad, too. And, it's noisy during busy periods. And, when the train finally comes, you’ll have a whole new set of challenges and a whole new set of strangers to contend with. But, it beats walking.

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