New Jersey Transit (A “24” Spoof)

Henry, a preschooler and Director of Field Ops races against the clock to save his country from ultimate disaster and make it home in time for snack. He breaks the 4^th wall often to speak to the audience. The author, an only child just like Henry, can confirm this is apparently a thing.

12:00 Henry looks out the dirty window of the train car and begins to speak in the style of Kiefer Sutherland. However, he has no idea who that is. We’ve been on… he pauses to sound out the sign in front of him … New Jersey Transit … he continues in his Kiefer cadence for two hours. Agent Mommy informs me that we should have been at Penn twenty minutes ago. He pretends to look at a cell phone for the time, as he’s seen adults do many times. We’re supposed to be at CitiField by in thirteen hundred hours.

The train jerks forward suddenly. Henry is on high alert, but Henry’s mom looks at his father disgustedly. This isn’t their first delayed train into New York. To Henry, they were his Agent Maria Hill and Nick Fury. (That is a reference he can wrap his brain around.) To everyone else, they were just another middle class, white suburban family, taking the coolness of New York City down three notches. 

“Ugh. Lee, what time is it?” Henry’s dad looks down at his phone and then up at his mother.  “Trust me. You don’t want to know.” Mom sighs heavily and looked out the window. “We’re not going to make the season ticket holder event.”  We will, mom. We will. Let me see if I can get to the bottom of this. It’s time for reconnaissance. Henry begins climbing all over his seat, his mother and his father. He might think he’s a covert operator but he has the attention span of a squirrel.

12:15 Henry has his face pressed against the window. Henry’s mother, in frustration, “Jesus Christ, Henry! You gotta stop.” Cheese and Rice, Mom! We haven’t budged one foot, so I’m doing important police work here.  Henry goes back to licking the window.

 Henry’s mother motions to his father to pull him off the window, because his impersonation of a suction cup Garfield will wind up with a bacterial infection. Mom, furiously scrolling through her phone, blurts out “I can’t stand going to Queens. You know, I though public transportation would be easier but it’s like we’re stuck on the BQE again. That’s it, next year we get Yankees’ tickets. They’re easier to get to.” Henry’s dad, not even looking up from his phone, “Trish, the tickets were free.” Henry’s mother, determined to get the last word, “Screw the Wilpons.” The train car jerks again. I knew it! Henry was confident that he did something, when he did nothing. The train begins moving toward its final-destination. Henry puts his feet on the window he was just trying to lick and tries to do a handstand on the seat. “Henry!” Both of his parents sigh in frustration.

12:30 The train finally comes out of a long dark tunnel to one of many Penn Station gates. Henry’s parents stand up, but they aren’t going anywhere. Everyone is eager to get off the train. However, you have a three-and-a-half-foot preschooler who fancies himself a super spy, you let the herd go first. Henry presses his fingers against the window vents like they are the keyboard of a complicated computer.

“We have to get to the LIRR”, Henry’s Mom said as her eyes darted around for direction. “No. We missed that one” his dad blurted out. The family’s eyes all dart to Dad in panic. Dad is on the hot spot and he is no Samuel L. Jackson. He gulped, “We have to take the subway.”

Mom gasps, “The subway?!” The subway? What’s a subway? “We’re screwed”, murmurs mom as the family’s attention began to look for the 7 train. Dad, trying to reassure the family, “We’ll get their faster. Henry, we are looking for the train with the number seven on it. Can you find the seven for me?” Dang it, man! I know what a number seven looks like. I need to find out what’s a subway is?!

Henry bobs and weaves through the intricate web of New Yorkers bustling to and fro, eagerly looking for this “different” train. His parents desperately fight through the crowd to keep up.  “Henry, slow down!” shouts his mom. I can’t! Even if he wanted to, they were running down a ramp and his little legs gained too much momentum. “I’ll give you a mission” his mother murmured to his father.” His father yells, “Henry, freeze!” Henry freezes like a racoon, caught by a garbage man, inches away from a black pole he’s about to run into.

Henry’s parents catch up and his mom scoops him up like a sack of potatoes. His father looks up and points to the sign for the seven train. “Look! That way!” He takes Henry from his mother, throws him over his shoulders, and they run. We follow the sea of Mets fans as they dance by. Actually, that dancing might be bouncing and that bouncing might be me. Man! Daddy is a bumpy agent.

12:45 Run! The family run down the stairs and onto the train as the subway door closed behind them without an inch to spare. So, this is a subway? An underground train? I have so many questions. Why are there windows? What are we under? If we open the windows, will we drown? The train is full and there is nowhere to sit. As the family looks around, what sits before them right out of a Scorsese movie. Nonetheless, multiple people of all sexes, ages, colors and sizes get up to offer a family with a very active spy a seat. 

Henry’s dad finds a spot to hold on to the pole as Henry sits with his mom on the bench. Henry looks at the car of tired commuters and hyped up Met fans headed toward the game. Is there anyone here that can slow us down? Or better yet, open a window? Suspects?!        

The subway rises out of a dark tunnel and climbs a ramp onto the elevated line. Henry eyes the door. A tired Chinese lady, arms filled with shopping bags shuffles to the door waiting for it to open at the next stop. Henry, who at this point, crawls behind his mother out of boredom. Like most moms, she has eyes behind her head. She puts her hand up over his mouth, right before he licks the even filthier window. 

As the train pulls into the lady’s stop, she stoically stares straight out the doors’ windows, trying to will them open. Henry sighs with exasperation. Why won’t the doors open already?! Henry shouts, breaking the tension in the car. Everyone laughs, including the stoic Chinese lady praying for the door to open. Henry’s mom flips him over her shoulder and sits him on her lap. Sometimes, even the best of agents needs to do surveillance on their partners.

12:55 The train slowly pulls into the Willets Points station. Henry’s mom whispers audibly to his dad, “Finally.”   The family can see the growing crowd outside the gate of the ballpark. Henry pushes his way to the front of the crowd, staring at the door like the Chinese lady the stop before. As if he was prepping to lead a brigade, he raises his hand, On me. The door begins to open as slowly as a mechanical door could. Go! Go! Go! Henry lowers his hand in dramatic flair, but before Henry could storm the beaches (or in this case the concrete bridge that crossed over highway from the tennis center to the ballpark), his mom grabs his hand and lifts him over the gap between the subway and the platform.