I once watched a child on a subway who was bothering his mother as she was trying to do her makeup in the reflection of the window. She was a hulking woman — her massive minotaur arms looked as though they had been chiseled from stone. Her child, unlike her, was soft and pudgy. His round face glowed crimson like he was always playing the game where he held his breath for as long as he could. He waved his arms at her and she showed him her hand as though “Leave me alone” was written on the crease of her palm. But the boy, too, was relentless without words. He groaned obnoxiously until his mother consented to unbuckle her purse and give him her phone.
At that point the boy slumped back into the seat beside the old man in the mothball blazer whose glasses looked like telescopes (which makes his crossword puzzle the stars). The boy then metamorphosed into an owl with opposable thumbs. Praise God for opposable thumbs! Such a beautiful instrument can be used in many ways: crossword puzzles, for instance, and makeup, and the perpetual scrolling that helps social media bring us such dopamedic glee. Today, however, opposable thumbs were fated to be the poor boy’s doom.
At this point I thought we had reached a rare moment of stasis in the universe. Here, on this subway, with the mother smudging her makeup at every bump, the boy on her phone, and the old man at work on his crossword puzzle. I like to think that the universe craves moments like this, like bathroom breaks during a marathon. Unfortunately, moments are much like subway stops, however, and this one was quickly cut short as the mother’s phone started to ring.
The boy looked up at her, pale, as though he had finally taken a breath. The woman gave him a half-hearted smile — half-smiling because her phone was ringing and she loved the attention, but also half-not-smiling because she wondered how she had come to birth so much trouble. This is the unbelievable part of my story — but not unbelievable as in it didn’t happen but rather unbelievable because it is really out of the ordinary: When the mother reached down to take her phone back from her child, the boy’s thumbs suddenly became fused with the screen of her phone!
The woman did not understand this of course. She tugged at it but the boy could not let go, which made her snort and step back. How dare you? her scowling expression said. The owl trembled in his seat as his mother extended out her hand. Now, “Give me my phone,” was written on her palm. The boy shrugged and tried to show her his once-opposable thumbs, but her eyes were locked with his own.
At this moment, the old man rocked in his seat, grinning excitedly, for he had spotted a constellation! He leaned forward and started to mark it with his pencil.
There was fire in the mother’s eyes now. She was the bull and her son was the trembling matador. The little owl’s eyes were glazed with tears. The phone was still ringing. Suddenly, his mother reached down and yanked again, this time with the strength of ten thousand opposable thumbs.
Ooo! cried the boy. The woman wrestled for the phone. They jostled back into the old man so that his pencil slashed across his puzzle. “Hey!” he shouted. The boy’s face was the color of a cherry lollipop. He fell to the floor, his mother shaking him. “Mom! Mom! MO-OM!”
It was the old man who finally came to the rescue. He dropped his precious newspaper and jumped forward to separate them. With the help of his trembling opposable thumbs, they were able to undo the terrible circumstantial knot — at least I believe so. Once they saw that the boy’s thumbs had merged with the phone screen, the three of them got off at St. Lawrence Street to go to the nearest hospital. I stayed on the subway because I was waiting until Denmark Ave.
I tell this story, less as a caution and more a confession. Because while all this was taking place, I did nothing except live-stream the whole thing.