Sometimes it’s best not to listen to the iPod on the subway. True, you’re more likely to be harrassed by a fundamentalist nut wanting you to attend an informational meeting, and your odds of being blasted in the face by an alcholic’s halitosis as he interrogates you to find out if you dye your hair are vastly increased. But you miss out on the more benign crazies.

A couple of days ago, I was riding up the long escalator in Porter Station. I was pretty engrossed in my book (Darling? by Heidi Jon Schmidt, in case you care), and after about 30 seconds I noticed that a slightly bag-ladyish-looking middle-aged woman was riding on the escalator parallel to the one I stood on and was serenading her fellow commuters. She actually had a pretty good voice, in that slightly quavery but clear tone of many female folksingers, and I turned my head slightly to better hear the strange song she was singing. I didn’t want to be too obvious and record her lyrics in my little notebook, but to the best of my recollection her freeform ditty went something like this:

Oh he’s got it hard
The straight, white, male businessman has got it so hard
He can never get where he wants to be. . . .
And the red man, that’s Geronimo
His life is one of struggle in corporate America . . .
Abraham, he married a fine Jew-ess, with the name of Sarah
But what he didn’t know
I said what nobody knew
Was that Sarah,
That good woman Sarah,
Was his aunt
Aunt aunt auntie auntie auntie aunt!
It’s true, you know?
Auntie!

And like that for quite some time. At the top of the long escalators, I maneuvered to get closer to her for the ride up the medium escalators. There was only one person between us. Vocalist Lady turned around and said to the tired-looking commuter in front of me, “You! Did you used to work at Aubonpainnn?” (This last she said very quickly and with as few consonants as possible). The woman ahead of me shook her head and smiled. “Aubonpain? AuBonPain?”

“No, sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”

“You didn’t work at Au, Bon, Pain? In Harvard Square?”

“Oh, Au Bon Pain.” (Laughing, bemused) “Nope, I’ve never worked there, sorry.”

“Oh, that’s SO SO surprising! You look JUST like the woman who used to work there, JUST LIKE her! She was Islamic! She had such a lovely facial structure, just lovely. You’re sure you’re not related? Oh well! DNA! It’s a marvelous thing, don’t you think?”

Then we were at street level and went our separate ways, the non-Au-Bon-Pain-working woman shaking her head and laughing.

Almost quittin’ time. I think tonight will be a quiet Friday at home — I’ll marinate and grill up some tuna steaks and cuddle up with my sweetie (assuming his skull-smashing headache from yesterday’s near-boycott of caffeine has subsided, that is) and watch some goofy TV.