Mind the Gap

Mind the Gap.

Very seldom does anybody give me instructions that are that useful and polite. It is almost more of a request, really. Please, please take care not to slip into the deadly void between the station platform and the infinite. Not only are the instructions sensible and cordial, they are also easy to follow.

As I stand in some subway station in Sydney, I take in the sparse decorations of limited interest from time to time but my eyes always go back to those three useful little words painted right there along the platform in sharp stencil lettering. Mind the Gap.

I think I will mind the gap, I decide. I will consent and participate in this social contract by making a solid point of minding the gap. Not just any gap, but this particular gap. When I get to the next gap, I will mind that too, in a manner that seems appropriate at the time. I may have plenty of time to mind this specific gap, though, because I have been standing on the platform for ages and no trains have come through. Other passengers begin to wander in from the street, joining me and what has so far been a crowd of just two people – me and some old lady sleeping in the corner. She is turned to the wall and not minding the gap at all. The whore.

The other passengers, meanwhile, are drinking soda, reading newspapers, talking loudly into cell phones to overcome the limited reception, listening to music through headphones, etc. I scan their faces. None of them appears to be minding the gap one bit, though they could be multi-tasking. That's no threat to me, I decide, and feel confident in my gap-minding supremacy. I am, certainly, the only person doing nothing but minding the gap.

But what about that fellow over there? Leaning up against a station map on the wall, his eyes are firmly fixed on the tracks, and to the untrained eye he looks lost in thought. But I know better. If he sees me staring at him, he makes no sign of it. "Fool!" his pose cries out to me. "While you are busy minding whether or not others are minding the gap, I have been minding it without such base distractions."

My determination hardens, and with furrowed brows I go back to minding the gap completely. I won't make the same mistake again. No act of deity, man or animal can now drive me from this task. If the end of the physical world comes roaring into the subway station as the trumpets of Revelation blare upstairs, let it be prepared to be ignored. I am minding the gap.

And, I decide, I am now ahead of the competition again. We are both the easy favorites in the station. We're leaning against the wall, furthest away from the gap as we can be. It's the classic gap-minding stance and we're both bringing our own style to it. Other people foolishly stand mid-platform or waste time on benches. Some even poke their heads out over the gap to see if the train is coming, which seems like looking down the barrel of a gun to see if it is loaded. Clearly these people are not true minders of the gap. And what none of them, not even my rival, knows is that I have the advantage. He is leaning against a subway map mounted to the mall in a plastic frame. An amateur's mistake. That puts him easily an inch or two closer to the gap. He doesn't seem to realize his mistake, and if it is no mistake – if it is an act of hubris – fine then. Either way, it shall be his downfall.

I happen to be a college graduate, and a fairly disciplined intellectual. Minding the gap? Please. Perhaps it just doesn't come naturally to others. It must be like hitting a fastball or throwing for a touchdown. Some people are just born with it and no amount of practice can overcome that. I imagine myself surrounded by reporters as I sit on a wooden bench and lean against my locker. The lights in my face force me to squint, and all I can do is wait for one reporter to ask a question loud enough just when the others have given up. Then it happens, and the answer flies from my lips so effortlessly that I don't even have to think about it first. "I dunno, Carol, you know, I just go out there every day and try to mind the gap as best as I can. You know, we're a team, so when I can't mind the gap the boys pick me up, but so far it's been a good year and I've been able to contribute. I'm really not concerned about who minds the gap so long as we get the championship."

The man leaning against the subway map has now shifted his position. He thinks nobody notices – he thinks he has the drop on all of us. He had started to walk innocently along the platform by a nearby column, just a few feet from the wall. His hands are shoved in his pockets calmly. He might as well just be whistling, too. He may look bored, but his eyes keep finding the gap. I move forward and find my own pole to lean against. I look very cool in my gap minding.

My mind returns to the locker room. I am older now, and the spotlight isn't quite as bright as it used to be. The young have come along, and they all think they have a better, faster, smarter and sexier way to mind the gap. There's that young Dominican kid who claims he can mind the gap from the ticket booth upstairs. He flashes a smile as he pays for his ticket. "No change, please," he laughs. "I'm minding the gap." Columnists even joke that there are people in India who can mind the gap for pennies a day.

But the arrogance of youth and the costs of cheap labor are no replacement for the guile that flows through the old when they know their time is fading. I am now posting gap-minding records that the kid will only have a chance of breaking if he posts my kind of longevity, and injuries are on the rise these days as the kids juice up with ginseng and other supplements long-banned in the gap-minding world. Meanwhile, I am a household name in gap-minding, one of the greats, not yet a legend but no longer simply a man. Glossy 8x10 photos appear of me smiling next to the owner in metropolitan Chinese restaurants. Somewhere in the middle of water cooler conversations and internet message board posts, I even get credit for minding gaps I never actually minded, and overpaid sports columnists wax philosophical about how I might have minded the newer gaps they are coming up with today.

Look at his nerve. My competitor has resumed gap-minding, strutting right to the middle of the platform. He looks transfixed, lost in thought perhaps, and I am forced to leave my own pole to stay competitive. Nobody outminds a gap on my watch. Nobody.

Time flies. I have minded every gap I have come across. I mind them in my sleep. The arguments begin, fitfully at first, that when I finally do retire, I might easily be regarded as one of the greatest gap-minders of all time. Nobody dares yet use the phrase, "The Greatest," but it is there, in the shadows, waiting to emerge. Like a plant beneath the soil in the spring thaw. Statistics and passion, for or against, litter these arguments as they move from the back pages of the sports section to a spot in every column covering my latest mind. The longer I mind gaps, the more the skeptics begin to come around. In the gap minding universe, they may have been looking at the sun.

The man is now impatiently standing almost at the edge of the train platform. I haven't seen this since the Markman vs. Spassky gap minding of '74, and frankly, I am shocked. As if I wouldn't know how to counter Markman-Spassky? I was minding gaps when Markman was a twinkle in his mother's eye. And then it happens. He looks up and down at the gap, and then checks his watch nonchalantly, as if we all hadn't seen the old, "pretend to look down at your watch but really mind the gap" trick.

"Foul!" I want to cry. "Shenanigans! Have you no shame, sir?" I won't though. I don't look, but I am sure every person on the platform must be staring at him in disbelief. Or perhaps looking at me. They are all waiting to see what I will do.

I won't be taken in by this jester, this pretender to the throne. I match him yard for yard, standing as close to the gap as he is. Our toes hang over into that forbidden space. Now it's a game of chicken.

My mind returns to the distant future. I can see myself at my own retirement, standing on the station platform, a slumping and sick version of my former self. The fans cheer around me as I deliver my farewell speech. I speak in slow, poetic, thankful tones, of America, team, family and God. I then turn dramatically and slowly walk that last tired walk alone, down the tunnel into the locker room. Into the very annals of history.

At my Hall of Fame induction, by which time I will be gone, men with top hats and misty eyes will thump their chests and speak of the days when men were real men and gaps were minded the hard way. The old-fashioned way.

One important politician, perhaps with a monocle and a voice like gravel, will stand at the podium and enrapture the crowd with the measured gravity of his speech. "Never," he will declare, "in the history of human events, has so much been done to mind so many gaps, by so few." Another man, with silver hair, perhaps a scientist or an economist, will stumble to the podium, in the final stages of his own life, and observe quietly, "Future generations will scarcely believe that one such as this, in flesh and blood, ever minded a gap."

As he closes his speech and makes his way offstage, the cheers of the crowd will rise into a great frenzy, an outpouring of love and good cheer that grows louder, louder, louder until it shatters the ears, and the whoosh of air blasts inches in front of my face as the train at last comes roaring into the station, so close to me I could touch it. An old woman nearby grabs my arm politely and pulls me back, and tells me, "Careful, love, mind the gap."