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Move outta my way.

I was heading up the steep stairs at the subway station when an old man came pushing through the crowd, talking a mile a minute.

“Move now, move on outta my way. I’m an old man, and I’m gettin’ up the stairs faster’n you.”

We crowded onto the subway car. I stood next to him and he sat down next to a woman in her early twenties, who turned, amused, and said, “Hello!”

“Well, hi there, now. You be careful what you say. If you say hi in Toronto something’s wrong with you. You better move to Vancouver where everyone says hi. If you wanna be unhappy move to Toronto. In Vancouver, people are relaxed. I’m headin’ out right now to get two beers to wake me up.”

The entire subway car exploded in laughter and continued being an appreciative audience for the rest of the ride.

“Naw, my doctor told me to do it. That’s a medicine. If you take too much medicine you’ll get sick. You know? So you only take what you’re supposed to take. See, that’s what happened to Elvis Presley. Ya see? The doctor gave him medicine and he overdid it. So he died young. Forty years old. I’m seventy, you see? He shoulda lived to a hundred and ten, Elvis Presley, with all that money. A whap-baba-looba-and whap-bam-boom.”

Big laugh. The train lurched and I started to fall, and - this has never happened before - the guy in his twenties behind me reached out lightning fast and caught the hood of my sweatshirt and steadied me.

“You’re all laughin’ but I’m givin it away for free. You want a big show, you gotta pay. It costs ya $150 to see me. It’s very expensive. Just trust me. I’m - look on tv, you’ll see me, ya’ll will know who I am. This is not my real face.”

The young woman, smiling, exited the train calling, “Have a nice day!”

“Okay, now, bye bye.”

“Bye!”

“Now which stop - oh, this is College. I don’t go to college anymore. I graduated. I’m a professor now. That’s right. But I don’t teach. I prophesize. I prophesize. Oh, what is that? I ain’t never used that word myself. It’s new to me. That’s a big word, prophesize. I’m gonna hit the road. I’m goin’ to Kansas City. Kansas City, here I come…they got some pretty ladies there I’m gonna get me one…I want more than one. I’m not satisfied with one lady. I gotta have more than one. I got an old lady and a young lady. How you like that? That’s not bad.”

The woman across the aisle coughed.

“Careful, you got your flu shot?” (Huge laugh.) “That sounds pretty rough there. I hope you don’t sleep with the window open. If you do, cover up good. Okay, bye bye. I’ll miss ya.”

Lots of people on the subway car said goodbye, and he sang, “Enjoy yourself…it’s later than you think! Bye bye folks, I’ll miss ya. Put an egg in your shoe and beat it!”

After the doors had closed, one woman said, “That just put a smile on everyone’s face.” And when I got off the subway it felt like that smile had stretched somehow to cover the entire city, so that the normally taciturn commuters were suddenly talking to each other, laughing and grinning for no reason at all.