Sunday, April 17, 2011

MARTA & A Thousand Rose Petals

Earlier this week, when I got to my MARTA station to make my way to school, I noticed that someone – a MARTA attendant? a helpful blog reader with a cleaning obsession? – removed the broken cookies from the MARTA platform. Hurray for progress and cleanliness!

It’s kind of comforting, in a dull, yawny way, when my MARTA station returns to its typical state of boring boringness. Therefore, imagine my shock and… and… dismay? rapture? shock again?... when Thursday brought a new surprise at my MARTAstation! There I was, trudging down the stairs from the parking deck toward the entry platform, when I saw this:



What is that, you may ask? Snow in Atlanta in Springtime? No! In fact, this photo shows a pile of white rose petals. The photo does not do justice the rosey petaly vision that was the MARTA station. There were thousands – literally thousands! – of white rose petals strewn about the floor. Petals in singles and pairs around the main area. Petals in tiny piles around the MARTA pass machines and in larger piles (like the one in the photo) around the various stairwells and columns. White rose petals swirling around commuting feet and skittering across the pavement on small puffs of breeze.

What happened to create such a scene? Well, I have a few ideas:
  • Some lovely young man, holding tight to a large bouquet of white roses, proposed to his beloved as she disembarked from her MARTA train. In a fit of rapturous joy upon her acceptance of his proposal, this young man threw the roses down on the paved MARTA floor and carried his intended off to his only slightly rusted, off-tan, 1994 Mazda 626, awaiting him on floor 4 of the parking deck.
  • The night before my arrival at the MARTA station was the first, and ultimately the last, night of a new business idea.  You know how you can be at a restaurant or a romantic locale and there are nice men and women wandering around selling roses to add to the ambience (and profit) of the place? Well, perhaps someone got the idea that this would succeed during evening rush hour and would bring joy to the masses heading home from a long day at work.  And perhaps one of the rush hour commuters, after a particularly bad day, disagreed… hence, white rose petals scattered everywhere and a new business idea ended in its infancy.
  • A traveling magician arrived at the MARTA station after a long flight and a seemingly equally long ride up the north-south line. As he exited through the turnstiles, he noticed an odd agitation coming from the covered birdcage he held. Whipping off the blanket covering the cage, he realized that he’d accidentally fed his magic doves a volatile concoction of beans, hot sauce and strong coffee (an easy error to make, of course). Realizing what was about to happen, this magic man grabbed his wand and yelled, “Abracadabra!” at the exact moment that the edible explosives took their deadly toll. Fortunately for all around – except the doves, of course – the magic trick worked, and rather than the mess that could have ensued, the MARTA station denizens found themselves in the midst of an explosion of thousands of white rose petals.
Those are my ideas. What do you think happened? Please share!

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