21/100: The Afternoon Shift
This article looks at Day 21in a series of 100 visits detailing what happens at my local library
I started taking this watercolor class on Tuesday mornings (more on that another time) and as such I’m working the afternoon shift at the library. It’s an entirely different place where I don’t recognize anyone. Moustachio is not here, nor is Vintage Tees, Stop & Shop Lady, MCAT with the braids. In their places are new faces: a clean-shaven, friendly-looking type in a checked shirt, an off-duty security guard studying a science-y textbook, and a woman who sneezes pretty frequently, always following this up by loudly exclaiming “Oh Lord”.
It’s busier in the afternoon, yet somehow, apart from the allergy-ridden churchgoer, quieter. Strange to think that only a few hours ago, it was a different place. Or rather, it was the same place with different people — people whom I know and who know me.
I know I don’t actually know them. But what is it to set eyes on the same people every day, to share the same ~40X80 feet of space with them again and again, if not to know them?
After graduating college, I taught English in Shanghai for a few years. The school was at the southern end of the sprawling city, and my insistence on living in its most trendy, expat-friendly enclave meant a 70-minute commute twice a day. I would catch the same 6:45 subway (metro to the Shanghainese) each morning. I must have boarded the train from the same spot on the platform too, because every day I found myself across from the same man. We were equally distinctive: he had a glass eye and wore a surgical mask (this was nearly a decade before Covid) and I was white, so there was no chance of either of us blending in.
We never spoke, but after a few weeks of sitting across from each other, we began to nod to one another. We nodded back and forth from Monday to Friday, October to June. Nine years later, I can still see his face perfectly.
In an earlier article from this series, I addressed the notion of what it is to be in a community. Riffing on the late New York Times writer Herbert Muschamp, I wrote that being part of a community simply meant having a shared experience. As the man with the glass eye is forever a part of my life, my people, in Shanghai, so these characters have been written into my library narrative.
I don’t know their names. I don’t know what kind of food they like, what their favorite movies are, or what music they like to listen to.
What I can tell you: Moustachio takes Casual Fridays quite seriously. Stop & Shop Lady likes muffins for breakfast. I’d bet good money that MCAT with the braids wants to be a doctor. And if his shirts are any indication, then to the food, movie, and music questions, Vintage Tees likes Orange Crush, Space Jam, and the Stones, respectively.
What does it mean to know someone? Is noticing knowing? Did they wonder, at my absence this morning, where is the woman who drinks from the steel coffee mug and spends too much time looking at other people?
Thanks for reading to the end! Check out more of the series here:
