2 of 52: Click-Clack, Ding-Dong, & Charlie Chan

If you like observing people then there’s no better place than the Chicago El aka. The CTA. The extremities are crazy, with one seat occupied by a clean-shaven white businessman with his $400 briefcase and his equally expensive phone. You can tell he dreads the smell of piss and B.O. reeking all the way down the train, and he just can’t wait to get off so he can get his Mocha-Frappa-Fucking-Chinno at one of his 10,000 local Starbucks locations. You wonder does he enjoy being a state attorney working 60 hour weeks making 360 K a year, or is he doing it to escape his Shit-Brick of a suburban wife so he can fuck his secretary on weekdays and pretend to be a father on weekends to his kids. Who probably aren’t even his.

In the seat next to him sits a 6’4” black guy with his Braves lid tipped back and his denims pulled down so low you could swear they were about to drop. He has his cell phone pulled out playing some 36 mafia gangsta rap, loud enough so everyone on the train can hear, but quiet enough to not drown out his own freestyle rap: “Rhymes cash-money like Lupe Fiasco, Naw gon’ be peached like Rod Blago.” He’s going places. The real question is if he’s rapping to kill time before he heads to Rogers Park to hustle some nobodies for the day’s paycheck, or is he on his way to work so he can support his family.

Two seats down from there sits a white college girl all cozy with a Black NorthFace, Brown Uggs, a Spray-tan that has no place for January in Chicago, and a Coach handbag so enormous that you could probably fit 3 Small children, a Chihuahua, and Kim Kardashian’s Ass comfortably inside. Her layer of makeup has to be an inch-plus, and she’s texting furiously like her life depends on it. She looks like every other girl in this city and you wonder if she likes looking like a clone, or if she’s just trying to be the same until she finds out what makes her different.

If you stray your eyes past her you’ll see an 70 year old man, who knows the government is never going to give him his social security so he has to work hard for shitty pay. Or is he not doing it for the money but to show he still has the 2 balls and a dick necessary to make him feel like he’s young and up there with the faces of tomorrow.

Three Asians sit behind the old geezer and they have all the signs of a triad gang, with their jet-black slick hair and identical faces of monotone soldiers. Or maybe their guns are smaller than their dicks and they're less of a fearless Hero Nakamura mold and more like Click-Clack, Ding-Dong, & Charlie Chan. (- By Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino)

And opposite them sits me. A broke-ass college kid whose trying to make his own niche by staking out the traits in others. They’re all unaware I’m observing them, making defiant judgments that if spoken out loud would force them to reveal their true identity. Over the next few stops they all get off and I don’t say a word leaving my empirical views to recline to the back of my head until I see someone just like them. You’d think I’m simply relaying stereotypes but if you’ve ever been on the El you’d know not a day goes by without you seeing at least one of these.

So you’re probably wondering why I told you about the people of the El, but really it’s not about them, it’s about you. Right now check your Facebook Chat and see how many of those people you talk too regularly. There's 20 or so you don’t talk to, simply because you think you know them. When in reality you know nothing. Maybe they're depressed and need some hope, or maybe they're even exactly like you just waiting and wondering who’ll come online to put a smile on their face.

So I’m asking you for a favor look down your list of friends online and find someone who you wouldn’t really consider a "friend." And just say Hi. Maybe you’ll find out they're exactly like you thought with a blend of shallowness and bore. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll find that you’ll connect and talk about random things that you would never have dreamt about and how you’ll be happy you had the guts to say hi because now you’re not judging, you’re learning.

“To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization”

- Abraham Lincoln