Crazy on the Outside

In the past few days, I've begun exploring my new home. One of the most striking things I've noticed is that New Yorkers seem incapable of silent displeasure. If a New Yorker is angry or annoyed you are going to know it. For example, on Wednesday I witnessed an older woman tell a bus driver to drop dead for refusing to take pennies as payment. Later, during my entrapment in the bowels of the F train tunnels in Queens, a young man got up and started pacing and screaming about how much he wanted to get home and how nobody better mess with him on his way to the bus. Then of course there's the honking, so oft accompanied by yelling, that is so integral to the driving experience in NYC. This is a city of 9 million people who wear their anger on their sleeves (they all look like this guy).

Coming from DC where talking on public transit is reserved for naive tourists and obnoxious teenagers, I'm a bit taken aback. Of course, people get angry everywhere but I think that in NYC people are a little bit closer to their public outburst threshold than they are in other cities. I wonder if I am I going to turn into a screamer who cannot control her rage? Until I become one of these crazy, angry, self-talking New Yorkers, I miss the relatively quiet citizenry of DC.