Rosie ScHaap tells the story of her commutes by sharing her experience in the train bar car. She begins by describing how regardless of the low quality appearance of the bar car, it still had “[her] kind of people” and that this was “[her] kind of joint.” She goes on to describe how she enjoyed “the company of strangers” who would find her “funny, smart and interesting.” She seems to have an interesting fascination with grown-ups and individuals who are not directly related to her and who do not treat her like a teenager. Instead, they treat her like an adult, treating her with respect. Her fascination with “grown-ups” is all too familiar. I relate to ScHaap here; for a majority of my teenage life I wanted to be treated as an adult or wanted grow up faster than I should have. This is what I hear in ScHaap’s story, a story of a teenage girl who wanted to be older than she was and feel some sense of belonging in adults’ world but learns the hard way that adults lead a difficult life.

In relation to our class discussion, ScHaap does not become a regular but instead plays the opposing role, the bartender. Through the process of reading tarot cards and determining the fate of these individuals’ lives, ScHaap became interestingly powerful and describes the “grown-ups [hanging] on [her] every word.” What is compelling about her story is that she was not the bartender from the start. Initially, she intended for distance in her relationship with these adults, no one asked for her name and she never asked for their names. Over time, however, people started to confide in her, sharing details of their lives which she listened to intently, here she went from being an individual reading tarot cards to a tarot card reader with a “few patrons.” She was a bartender now and held a responsibility she would not been able to bare for the long haul.

After an eye-opening experience with an older man whose life had fallen apart, both in her cards and in real life, ScHaap realizes that “adults had problems that [she] could not fathom” and that “loss, fear and death lay somewhere ahead.” ScHaap is exposed to the realities of adult life and immediately hates it. Unlike the descriptions Danovich and Danler provide of the relationships bartenders share with their regulars or customers, Schaap’s is less glamourous and short lived. While the experiences Danovich and Danler share are ones to admire, ScHaap’s experience is painful to witness and even harder to stomach. Schaap’s story is nothing more than a painful and unfortunate discovery that happened all to soon but was one anticipated by listeners.