"Don't Call Attention To Yourself"

Survival strategies from my mother

“Don’t call attention to yourself in public!” my mother said, way more than once, when I was a child.

Perhaps it was that time she was guest preaching at a small rural church and I, at about four years old I think, pulled up my dress in front of the entire congregation.

It could have been in response to the sound of me talking too loudly in a hotel lobby.

Maybe it was the time the tour bus driver in Atlanta left us at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial when I was five. He didn’t seem to like children.

There were many, many times when my mom admonished me not to call attention to myself in public, and this advice has likely kept me alive all these years.

In the subways and on the trolleys of Philadelphia, I seem to be the only person who was raised to NOT call attention to themselves. Calling attention to oneself is a way of life in this deep blue city, where talking loudly on a cell phone, blasting music on speaker or even on a boom box, fighting in public and screaming at people is just normal. I am the freak who tries to keep quiet.

I did once break down on the Market Frankford subway line, three years ago headed home from a long, terrible day teaching public school. Someone was blasting some noise peppered with words that people fought to get out of our language, and I just cracked up. I called up “George Winston piano music” on my iPhone and turned it up as loud as it would go. That, my friends, is my kind of resistance.

I’m lucky I didn’t get shot.

Tuesday was a particularly anxious day on public transit. I’ve seen a lot - people vaping, smoking weed, peeing, screaming, making out (that’s fine if they’re quiet), shooting up, asleep, writhing, crying, all sorts of things. Once at 6:30 am on my way into teach a man drinking a 40 of beer sat next to me and commenced to verbally abuse me and tell me how racist I was until I got up and moved. My crime? He said, “Can I ask you a question?” and I said, “I’m sorry sir, I can’t talk right now.” The women who have written about how it is presumed that we owe anyone and everyone our attention have written about it better than I can, so I’ll just leave that here.

I’ve seen a lot, but I’ve never seen someone murdered, and I hope I never will. I especially hope not to be murdered on transit. It’s a lot to ask, I know, in these days of racial and political tension when the fares are going up and schedules are getting worse. We are all under a lot of stress. Please don’t slit my throat though. It will just cause us both more stress in the medium to long term!

As you may have guessed, I have been quite upset about the murder of young Iryna Zarutska. You can see the full video on Josh Slocum’s Disaffected Podcast. I have been in subways with enough people who seemed to be quite mentally unwell to identify all too much with the victim.

No shrinking white woman, I have lived my entire adult life in very urban areas, including Philadelphia, Jersey City, New Haven and New York. Philly neighborhoods felt perfectly safe for most of the last 25 years.

Not so much anymore. Things changed during the pandemic. I returned from two years living in Reading to find that people never smiled or said hello on the street. I thought this was just because of the masks and risk of Covid, but while the masks came off, the smiles didn’t return.

The subways are uniquely hellish.

I take one to pick up Loviefluffy’s thyroid medication at the compounding pharmacy. Those of you who are paid subscribers pay for her $66 a month thyroid meds compounded into fish flavored treats, which is the only way she will take her life saving medication. We thank you fishily.

The Broad Street Line subway is host to a great many people who smoke lit joints and cigarettes on the train as well as in the station. It smells perpetually of urine and weed. The screaming, loud phones and loud music are ever-present.

I am usually annoyed on the Broad Street Line. Tuesday I was afraid.

I am very, very careful not to call attention to myself.

“Excuse me, please,” is my constant refrain when walking in front of someone to enter or exit the train. I try not to look at my phone and do not put in my headphones. But all the situational awareness in the world would not save me if someone with a knife who should be in jail or an institution were to decide it was my day to die. I’d just realize it sooner than Iryna did.

I am told that crime is down, that I am paranoid. I hope so, but I fear not. I’d rather not say, “I told you so,” from the hospital or the grave.

The chances are indeed minimal that I would actually be murdered or witness a murder in the subways. But the fact that we have to worry about it at all, that public transit is such a lawless wasteland that people trying to get to their jobs and other places where they must go have to put up with all sorts of bad behavior, is an indication of just how far these deep blue cities have sunk. The stress wears away at me, making my temper shorter and my sleep worse. People who have always lived in the suburbs or country have no idea what it is like to live with urban poverty… and likely they do not want to.

It has been a tragic, horrifying few weeks. As I watch people celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk, and minimize the murder of Iryna Zarutska, I wonder if anyone will ever be able to find common ground again. Can we agree that people should not be shot or stabbed? No, apparently, we can not. Indeed, some would see me as the villain for considering the death of both of these people a tragedy worth mourning.