When a bad hair day can really get you down.

Have you ever had one of those days when all you could think about was going home, putting on your fat clothes and curling up on the sofa with the remote? Well, I had one of those days last month shortly before Christmas. It was a Friday and I was having a bad hair day. My clothes felt tight and I was wearing a different perfume than usual that was making my skin crawl and agitating my senses. I just desperately wanted to go home, shower, change and drink a beer. Work was busy and stressful and I had to stay late so a co-worker kindly drove me to the metro. He dropped me off at a different station than the one I usually take, but I was happy, because it was a direct route to the bus I needed to take home. I would get home quicker than if I had followed my normal commute; light at the end of my otherwise gloomy day.

As the metro stop came into view I noticed flashing blue and red lights. I said over to my friend, “I hope that doesn’t mean someone jumped.” “Nah” he responded, “It’s before the actual Metro”. And indeed it was. We pulled up in front and the emergency vehicles were behind us on the corner, so I grabbed my things, said goodbye and hopped out. My co-worker drove away and I entered the metro station, or rather a blockade of people, held back by a yellow and black caution tape barrier and three police officers. In the chaos, I asked the nearest person to me what was going on. She said the metro was closed and they didn’t know when it was going to reopen. ‘Great. Just my luck’, I thought. ‘Now what I am supposed to do?’ I was in the middle of nowhere Montreal at a metro station I was completely unfamiliar with, with no other way to get home. I thought to call my co-worker back, but then decided against it. He lived in the north, why would he drive me to the south. I had no other choice but to stay where I was.

The police officers instructed us all to go outside and wait for the special buses to take us along the metro’s route. I have experienced in the past that it is usually quicker to just chill out and wait for the metro to reopen than to sit in traffic on one of those buses. However, my desire to go home was too great, I had no patience left in me to calmly wait. Not to mention they weren’t providing us with any kind of time frame, something that they usually do so obviously this was a fairly serious closure. I looked over at the kind lady I spoke to before and we both shrugged our shoulders. She asked me where I was going and I said to the south shore, she happily responded that she too was going to the shore so we partnered up and went outside to find the special buses. No matter what age, the buddy system never fails.

Outside we went, and down fell the rain. A cold thundershower was exactly what the day ordered, especially with me sporting around my company’s laptop. There we stood in the pouring rain, waiting for a bus in what we later found out was the wrong line. We were told the line we needed was over on the east side of the metro building so off we went. There must have been hundreds of people swarming around these buses like pigs at a trough. People were squeezing there way into the back doors while others were properly entering at the front. Everyone was pushing and shoving and many were cursing. It was a completely ridiculous scene. My new buddy kept insisting that it felt wrong to her. She was convinced that the direction the buses were going was not correct. I couldn’t help her either way, as I couldn’t tell what was up from down at this point. We decided to leave and check out the other side of the building. At this point what did we have to lose? It looked sceptical as there was no one waiting on the west side, but we quickly asked someone and after learned that we had finally found the buses going south. One quickly came and we boarded it immediately and without trouble. Seemed no one was interested to head downtown that night. Lucky for us as we were able to comfortably find a seat and get warm.

My hair had gone from bad to dreadful, all tangled and dripping wet. My pants were soaked and my shoes had leaked in water. But I was thankfully sitting down on a warm bus, going in the right direction. I got to learn all about my buddies life (a quite interesting one at that) and she in turn got to learn a bit about me. It took me 2 ½ hours in total to get home and when the bus finally did take us to the metro it was still shut down (something about a water main break… riiight).

It seems I had for once, made the wise choice.