How to deal with riding the train while wearing a white shirt covered in red wine:

  1. Board the train.
  2. Don’t make eye contact with anyone, not even the anchors on the Pix 11 posters.
  3. Sit and cover the lower half of your shirt with your messenger bag in a way that feels natural.
  4. Realize that it doesn’t look natural.
  5. Get more uncomfortable.
  6. Pull out your Economist because it will make you look informed, confident, and incapable of spilling wine all over yourself while telling a story about how terrified you are of Lasik.
  7. Double dip recession? Depressing. Put that up.
  8. Pull out your book because maybe if you hold it just right, the cover will obscure the enormous stain on your shoulder.
  9. Notice that the cover of your book somehow has an enormous hole in it.
  10. Stare at the hole and wonder how it got there.
  11. Remember shoving a wet umbrella inside your bag the previous afternoon. The spikes of the umbrella coupled with water must have somehow bore a small hole through it. Weird. OK, by the way, now you look crazy.
  12. Put the book back.
  13. Sigh. Look around.
  14. Realize that no one cares about you or your stain. In fact, there’s a good chance no one on this train has even noticed it.
  15. Put on your headphones and listen to 4.
  16. Get the idea for a list while listening to “Countdown”