Alex Palazzo is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at The University of Toronto.
From the Metropolitan Diaries section of today's NYTimes:
I boarded the 57th Street crosstown bus at York Avenue and, as usual, inserted my senior citizen transit card incorrectly. The driver very kindly took it out of the fare box slot and reversed it before handing it back to me to reinsert. I sat down wondering why I could not master this simple procedure. True, I didn't use city buses regularly, but still ...My seat overlooked the bus entrance, where I could observe boarders doing it right the first time without assistance. The large black bar went on the right, the cutoff corner on the upper left. I told the driver (we'd been talking) that I'd just completed the short course on card insertion.
He laughed. "Listen to this," he said. "I've been on this route so long that I've gotten to know all the early morning regulars. One of them, an older guy, just couldn't get the card thing right. I always had to help him; not that I minded, but he took some kidding. So one day after he got on, people were applauding and congratulating him, and I couldn't figure out why."
"Because he'd finally put the card in the right way?" I asked.
"Nope. It was just announced the night before that he'd won the Nobel Prize. Someone told me it was for some kind of scientific work at Sloan-Kettering or the Rockefeller Institute. How about that? The Nobel Prize."
We were silent for a moment. "That's a good story," I said, realizing my downtown bus was just pulling into its Second Avenue stop and I'd have to leave before I could find out more. But boarding my bus, I did insert my card correctly with no fumbling whatsoever.
Gene Epstein
Paul Greengard???
Comments
Gunter Blobel? But he's not thaaaat "old"....
Posted by: Sunil | March 19, 2007 12:24 PM
Gunter is old, but he got the Nobel before the MetroCard was much in use ... (I'll have to double check that...)
Posted by: apalazzo | March 19, 2007 4:24 PM
Whether it's Paul Greengard or Guenter Blobel, I thought the story was hilarious!
Posted by: Julie | March 19, 2007 5:12 PM
The MetroCard wasn't really in use when Blobel got the nobel (I have tokens to prove it) but even if they were I doubt very seriously that he would take the bus every day. Just my opinion.
Posted by: BTM | March 19, 2007 6:08 PM
OK here is the lowdown on the MetroCard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetroCard
It started in 1994 and was fully implemented (i.e. all bus and subways accepted MetroCards) in 1997. Tokens were phased out in 2003. I first arrived in NYC in 1997, and tokens were still the main subway currency. This gradually changed over the year to the Metrocard. Now as to the senior citizen MetroCards, this I'm not sure.
Blobel got the Nobel in 1999 so it is possible that it was him.
Posted by: apalazzo | March 21, 2007 9:45 AM