[Ed. Note: Long time readers of Above the Law will remember Exley, a contestant for ATL Idol during which Lat had the ludicrous idea of letting the readers chose ATL's next editor. Exley's got a new blog called Ying-A-Ling, where she wrote this gem of a story of how she used her Biglaw skills to handle a subway situation that we thought you would like.]

So it’s Tuesday morning and the subways on the yellow line are mysteriously MIA. When an R-train finally arrives, it’s so packed that half the people on the platform give up and wait for the next one. I am about to give up too but at the last second see a tiny sliver of space and squeeze myself in just before the doors close.

Two stops into the crowded ride, I’m still congratulating myself on my urban ninja skills when the guy behind me mutters, “Don’t lean on me.”

I hadn’t been leaning on him, though I certainly could have bumped or nudged into him, given the sway of the subway car and all. But actual leaning was what the man in the full velvet suit on my left was doing to me. I was not leaning.

Two years ago, when I was new to New York, two girls had said the same thing to me on the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square when I had accidentally touched their arms. I’m talking about two young girls, up to my shoulder in height, braces, maybe even pigtails. Nonetheless, I backed away as if they had scorched me with hot irons, and tears might have, you know, sprang to my eyes and s**t.

That was the old me. Today, I am a hardened urban f**king ninja….

Continue reading “Return of Exley: Pissed Off on the Subway”