Introducing: Keegan’s Darkness: The Rules of New York, Rule #27

There’s a special hatred that unlocks within you upon moving to New York; and whether it’s wanting to burn Koreatown to the ground ( I admit that sounds bad but it’s not what it seems), slashing the tires of a terrible Uber driver, or prying open the doors and abandoning a stalled subway car because even death by third rail would be a relief, you and I have both felt this deep hatred before. It’s not healthy to let these things lie, and so it's time to let that hate flow freely. Today’s rule- #27: If you stop at the top of the subway stairs for any reason, you can, and should, be pushed down them.

I don’t care about age, race, gender, or creed; if you stop you drop. You could be a ninety-year-old sweet grandmother of twelve and I would still lower my fucking shoulder if you stopped. The same thing goes for kids. Parents, it’s on you to teach your children to not enter the danger zone unless they’re ready to descend into the darkness. You don’t teach your kids to stop and text in the crosswalk, and likewise you shouldn’t teach them to stand and text in front of a steep stairwell with hundreds of disenfranchised, seasonally depressed, overworked, and underpaid minions who would literally murder an orphan to get home.

So hear me now and forever, if you pause at any point on a subway stairwell, you put yourself at the mercy of the masses, and you deserve a swift shove. A shove to a pauserby is not a crime; no, it’s a service. The contrapasso is an idea that originated in Dante’s Inferno. The contrapasso is the term for a punishment that reflects the crime. For example, in the Inferno, gluttons, who spent their entire lives eating to excess, spend eternity in Hell being eaten by a three headed dog.

And so in the same vein, the contrapasso for standing like an idiot at the top of subway stairs is that just like you break your victims’ chances of making their train, you break every bone in your body on the way down three flights of steep, and slippery steps.

Rule #27, don’t forget it.