Friday, January 6, 2006 - 12:19 p.m.

All rules go out the window when you take the "el" on non-rush hour times. I rarely get the opportunity to do this but you find a whole new interesting set of people who are wandering around Chicago in the middle of the day.

Before I boarded the train, I helped a family with three children figure out which side went north. The three children kept screaming at the mom "Santa already gave us that in our stockings". Why were the children pointing this out and were they about to receive another gift they were now refusing?

There were plenty of seats on the train and I sat backward near the window. After a while this made me a little nauseous so I stopped reading.

There was a panhandler on the train who seemed to come out of nowhere. He had one of those canes for blind people (is there an official word for this?) so I assume he could barely see yet he had the biggest eyes for someone visually impaired. They seemed to shoot out of his head.

He received a little change from the crowd and said "God Bless". He then stood by the door that goes between the cars and counted his change by feel. Then burst into a chorus of "Jesus is the reason"

In front of me about three rows facing me was a man who was probably homeless. He had a huge distressed bag of random stuff. THis man was enjoying a piece of cherry pie. It was his lucky day because he had three piece, all stacked upon each other. When he finished the first piece, he moved to the second piece by turning over his plate where the pie had stuck to the bottom of the top plate. He did seem to be thoroughly enjoying his dessert.

As I went down the stairs at the station getting off the train, there was a woman who was coming up the stairs and had to rest after every two steps. She would let out a gasp before starting again.