Something bad has happened to my brand-new El card to where it doesn't work when you put it in the gate.

It still has quite a bit of money on it, or else I would just cut my losses and invest in another one.

As it is, I spent two days putting it in hopefully, getting an ERROR message, and getting waved through for free by an attendant.

I would seem to be living pretty, except for the fact that the $1.50 I'm saving each time is not making up for the two minutes I lose while the attendant checks the busted card to see if it does, in fact, have money on it. The delay actually made me miss a train the other day.

But I'm always in too much of a rush to stop and see if I can't get the balance transferred to another card. I guess I'm waiting for the attendant to offer that as a solution.

The one the other afternoon was the worst. She was on the phone in her little glass booth for like a minute and a half before she deigned to hang up and come help me, and then she clomped over to the gate with Frankenshoes, glaring at me, and wouldn't believe me when I said I had already tried the card in both gates. Then she took the card and ran it through her checking machine. Then she rubbed it between her hands for awhile (at this point I didn't really want it back), and then she opened the big gate and waved me through. And slammed it behind me really hard to let me know just what she thought of me making her do a little work.

I don't know why I'm trying so hard to get on the El anyway. It's just full of blind people trying to bum cigarattes (although we all had a little frisson of excitement when he scored one wondering if he was going to light up then and there; he was already swaying all over the place, so why not add another element of danger to the mix) and pharisee homeboys declaiming at the top of their lungs about how if they had met the blind guy on the street, they would have taken him to Wendy's for a meal.

blind guy: Oh yeah, brother.

homeboy: Yeah, we go in there and get us that whole meal menu: #1, #2, and some #3.

blind guy: That's what I'm talking about.

homeboy: Cause if you do some good, some good come back to you.

blind guy: Oh yeah, do some good.

homeboy: You got to help a brother out.

blind guy: Yeah man. I know.

homeboy: And then you supersize it, my man. With fries!

blind guy: I hear ya.

As did we all. What it came down to was that homeboy gave blind guy a cigarette and 80 cents. Had blind guy only met homeboy earlier in the day, they could apparently have lived the life of Riley up one end and down the other of the 99 cent Wendy's value meal.

Me, I'd spent my last $1.50 getting an El card because I inadvertently left my broken one on my desk.