quincy market | Read it to absorb my awesomeness

I woke up at 6:30 a.m on Saturday and went to work to massage five clients. I got out of work at 3:30, worn and bedraggled blinking into the sunshine. I head to Boston wearing my work shirt and khaki pants smeared with massage gel.

I stopped at a rest area to change out of my uniform.

When I arrived in Mass, I parked my car at Kristina’s sisters house and went to catch the bus for downtown Boston. This was my first time ever to take a bus by myself. My friends knew this and were worried for me. I’m also bad at directions and have trouble understanding people who give me directions. I’m sure my friends are well aware of that.

I got lost trying to find the bus, so I walk up to a stranger and ask;

“Excuse me, can you tell me where Watertown square is?”

“This is Watertown square.”

“Oh great! Can you tell me where the bus is?”

He asks where I’m trying to go, then points me in the right direction to the right bus. But I end up walking down the wrong street. So I call Kristina.

Kristina – “Where are you?”

“Oh, um, I don’t know.” Answers such as these really tend to piss her off, so I quickly say; “The Hess station.”

“You went the wrong way. Head toward staple’s, you will see a big river. Huge river! You can’t miss it. Walk over the bridge and the bus stop will be on your left.” She’s explaining this to me as if I’m a foreigner who know’s no English.

I don’t see any river.

I’m back on the phone with Kristina, “You don’t see any river?!” She thought I was fucking with her. She explains to me again how to get to the bus stop, this time she was clearly losing patience.

I find the bus stop.

Kristina calls again telling me what bus I should take. At the same time Kristina was talking to me (she talks really fast), a woman standing next to me smoking a cigarette also wanted to help me. The smoking lady started talking to me the same time Kristina was talking to me. I didn’t know who to listen to. I was so tired and so hungry. My head did not want to decipher the special language of bus routes while listening to two people talk at once.

I wanted to get off the phone with Kristina, but she kept talking. I think she was scared I wouldn’t make it on the bus and needed to be guided through it like everything else.

I miraculously made it onto the correct bus. My bus driver wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.

When we reached downtown, everyone started to get off the bus. So I got off the bus with them. Apparently this was a mistake.

This time I’m on the phone with Holly.

“Where are you?”

I tell her the street’s.

“Ask someone where south station is.”

The guy I asked tells me it’s down the street. When I got down the street, it was south end station. I wanted just south station.

My friends are looking for me at the wrong station.

They start giving me all sorts of directions on what to do. Then they decide I should just stay put and they would come find me.

I say, “But this train goes to south station. I can come to you.”

Holly -“Is that what you want to do?”

“Yeah sure, why not?”

Holly does not trust that I know how to use the T. There were signs everywhere that said the orange line goes to south station, but Holly insisted that I find out for sure.

I felt stupid asking someone while there were signs directly over my head telling me what I needed to know. But Holly wouldn’t let me get on the train until I asked someone. And so I did.

I went to the bathroom because my friends were making me anxious. While in the bathroom, I hear that track 3 was arriving and heading to south station. This was not the T, it was more like a train than a subway.

I find track 3 and met the conductor as he opens the doors.

“Are you going to south station?” Holly would be so proud I asked.

“Yes we are.”

“Do I need a ticket or something?”

He looks at the worried expression on my face and feels sorry for me.

“Nah, you just go right on in.”

I arrive at south station and my friends are in china town looking for me. They thought I taken the T to china town.

They tell me to sit still exactly where I am and they would come find me.

So I take some pictures.