The elongated streetcar came to rest at the corner of Queen St East and Connaught Ave. The driver announced over the speaker system that the 501 Queen St Eastbound car would be going out of service once the passengers had disembarked. The three dozen or so people on the car were informed to proceed to the front to obtain a transfer in the event that they did not already have one and leave the car as another one will be along in a few minutes to continue eastbound to the final destination Neville Park.
I was seated in the streetcar’s rear section with about a half dozen other commuters likely on their ways home from work. Once the driver had finished his announcement, I got off the train at its rear doors, peered westbound down Queen Street in hopes that the next train would be approaching and took my place on the sidewalk with my fellow passengers.
It was a beautiful August afternoon and the next streetcar was quickly approaching as promised by the driver of the previous car. Because of these aforementioned variables, spirits were unusually high amongst the stranded few and conversation could be heard between several of the people waiting on the southeast corner of Queen Street and Connaught. Typically, I stood quietly in hopes that the following streetcar wouldn’t be packed with passengers and that it would be the elongated model that features a secondary car connected to the first by way of wires, cables and clamps that are wisely veiled by a housing compartment where I have stood many a time, wanting a seat to become available to accommodate my quickly-aging lower back and often languid legs.
As the streetcar approached, I noted that not only was it nearly empty, but that it was the elongated model I had pined for, and as I boarded, I made my way to the rear of the second car to sit in exactly the same positioned seat I had sat in on the first car that was taken out of service no more than 5 minutes earlier. My preference is to sit on the left side of the car, three rows of seats from the area adjacent to the rear double-doors. I sit next to the window, fully ajar, with my left arm’s elbow jutting out the window, left leg bent and perched on a ledge about a foot and a half above the floor, neck bent and head down.
Once I had seated myself, I notice that three men who were riding the previous car with me have all sat in the exact same seats they were seated in on the previous car. A man not more than 25 sat two rows behind me on the other side, also adjacent to an open window. He had dark, shortly-cropped black ringlets and a slim moustache. His dark spectacles at first glanced appeared to be a hipster-like fashion statement, but upon second glance, seemed to be quite consistent with his contemporary eastern-european book-nerd appearance. I looked back at him a few times in an attempt to sneak a peak at what he was reading, however unfortunately I couldn’t clearly make-out the book’s title or author, so I turned back around and continued to read my book. A middle-aged bald man sat to my right, three seats over on the other side of the aisle and was presumably text messaging a friend of his on his archaic, sepia tinted flip phone as I noted he was doing on the previous car. The other passenger that was seated in the same seat on the streetcar that had gone out of service was an African man in his late 20’s that appeared to be from a West African nation like the Ivory Coast or Ghana based on the shape of his forehead and nasal column. He peered out the window, constantly craning his neck as if he had just spotted something familiar, turning his head to the right until whatever he had seen was merely an object in the distance.
I wondered to myself if the other three passengers were cognizant of the fact that we had all sat in the same seats we had been sitting in on the previous car. It seemed to be a natural, instinctual move to sit where you had previously found comfort, but nonetheless I found it unusual, if not amusing. We are all creatures of habit, sometimes so much so that we don’t even take note of the minute variables that contribute to such a habitual way of life.
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