All for attention

I woke up at 6 am, my body had gotten so used to waking up that early that I don’t even use an alarm clock. I have a daily routine which involves me making a strawberry banana smoothie, and then I take a shower, then get dressed brush my teeth and go to the town train station and then go to Newark Penn Station, and from then on I take the path and I get off at the World Trade Center. When I arrive at the station it's usually the same old people; you know the usual 6:42 crowd, but today there were two new people. The first was an old stocky white man who seemed to have an abundance of money because of his outfit. He wore a William Westmancott Ultimate Bespoke, and he also had a pair of Versace eyewear and not to mention his Rolex. I asked him where he was heading and he talked in a very boastful manner.

“Yeah I work on Wall Street, you ever hear of this company called Enron? Yeah I work for them, I’m one of the companies accountants.” He only went one minute without saying or mentioning something that he owns or how rich he was out of the 15 minutes I was talking with him.

The train seemed to be running late so I went to the other man and he was the complete opposite of the white man. He was skinny, he looked 17 but it looked as if he hadn’t owned anything in his entire life. I wanted to talk to him but as I approached him; the train came.

As we were boarding the train I noticed that the white man was the first one in line at the door, but there was a lady who had been waiting in line for 10 minutes, but he just cut in front of her; and she didn’t say anything, she just stood there and let him do it. Once I boarded the train I was looking around to see which seats were available and I noticed that the young boy was sitting alone in the window seat and as I was walking to the seat next to him the white man came and said “Hey you, yeah I want that window seat.” The man was talking to the boy and the boy just nodded his head and got up and let the man sit there and he sat next to him.

So I just sat right across from them with Nate; he’s one of the photographers for The New York Times, him and I would sometimes talk about sports, politics, you know the usual stuff. Nate and I were talking about how the gap for the upper and lower class was getting larger and larger when we heard the conductor yell “Get your tickets out!”

Nate and I pulled out our monthly passes, but for the white man and the young boy it was two completely different stories. When the conductor asked the young boy for his ticket the boy said that he didn’t have it. The conductor then proceeded to ask him where he was going and the boy told him he wanted to go to Newark Penn Station and the conductor said that it was illegal to go on the train and not have a ticket, and how he had to get off the next stop and then it escalated quickly because the boy told the conductor that he was going to Newark Penn Station on this train no matter what. Then the conductor started to yell and as all of this was happening the man by the window seat looked as if he didn’t give a care in the world for the boy, but since the conductor was yelling and everyone was looking at his direction and some people were even recording and I noticed the man see the phones and people staring then he finally said “I’ll pay for the boys ticket. How much is it?”

The conductor said “It’ll be $8.25.” The man reached into his suit pulled out his wallet which had diamonds on the edges and he pulled out a 20 and gave it to the conductor and he said “Keep the change.”

The conductor grabbed the 20, said thank you and then he let the white man go and not check his ticket because he said he was very “generous” even though he wouldn’t have done that if there weren’t any cameras. Once the conductor left everyone patted the man on the shoulder and then Nate stood up and took a picture of the white man with the young boy and he told me how he was going to put up a small article about what had happened. He told me that he was going to title the article Wolf of Wall Street Saves Pauper Teenager.

When I heard that I thought it was a shame because the white man was being praised as if he had just found the cure for cancer, but in reality he didn’t give a damn and only did it because he saw that people were recording him and he didn’t want to ruin his image. I knew I couldn’t do anything about it, you know like the media blowing something out of proportion, or idolizing the villains, or the wealth protecting the poor but only for their image not because they actually want to. All I did was think about that for the whole day, but I just brushed it off and continued with my life.