9-11. Never thought I'd be so happy to be annoyed with my fellow commuters....

My commute really pissed me off this morning. People were rude, it was disgustingly humid, I was covered in sweat and rain, and yet I'm grateful.

Why? Because this morning reminded me of a cartoon I saw some 5+ years ago in the New Yorker. It was a small drawing of a man on the subway, with a statement that effectively said "Things are back to normal, I hate everyone again." That still makes me chuckle. I remember being relieved to see that we could joke, gently, about 9-11 and the effect it had upon us.

The cartoon was, of course, in reference to the extraordinary wave of kindness and openness that swept through the city post 9-11. People held doors for others, looked at each other in the face, smiled, walked slower, and generally tried to get along.

Then life moved on, and people started to hurry again. They sped up to make the train, blowing past (or bowling over) others in their efforts. People stopped looking at everyone and retreated to the stance of "if I don't look at everyone on the train that I am mushed up against, they will cease to exist and make this commute more palatable to me," and so on and so forth.

This wasn't callousness. This was life, reasserting itself and allowing us to heal, to cope, to deal....with the crushing sea of humanity sharing your commute.

And so today, 6 years after 9-11, in the crush of trying to get Monkey to school on time, in the annoying rain and suffocating humidity, during rush-hour, all I was - was annoyed. I wasn't thinking about terrorism.

Thank you, aggressively rude wallstreeter, you who insisted on shoving my child's stroller so you could get into the train before us. Thank you, maddeningly hung-over teenager, you who insisted on wobbling to and fro on the street and making it impossible for me to pass you. Thank you, annoyingly slow commuters, you who forced me to stand in the stairway straining to hold up my daughter's stroller for 5 minutes while you tried to open your umbrellas and I got rained on. You all managed to really piss me off. And for that, oddly enough, I am grateful.