Jacques Tati eat your heart out

There is a scene in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday that resonated with me today.... I was successful in getting to the school where last week I had spent a futile 40minutes wandering in circles in the snow and cold. It turned out this morning that the school scaffolding (yes another school being renovated in some way) can be viewed quite easily from the corner near the station, if one knows what to look for that is! I blame the sun in my eyes, the ice on the footpaths, the snow on the street signs and my stubbornness, for my getting lost last week. However back to today's adventure.....
Having spent an entire day, not entirely fruitfully, working on a grant application for the school I headed back to the "J" train to make my way home in midtown. The train pulled into the station and traveled two stops and then they announced that the train was terminating there at Myrtle Avenue. Off we all pile and wait for the next train which duly arrived and while we waited for all the people to get off the announcement came from that train that it was terminating at this stop. Only by listening to the other passengers did we hear that there was problems on the Bridge- a work vehicle was stuck or something.
So what to do? Listening to the young commuters talking about what they would do helped me figure out my options. One young man was saying he had to get to his grnadmother's in Queens. His friends suggested that they all had 4 options- Wait for the next train, get a bus, walk to another subway (which in their opinion was miles away) or go back the way we came but on the M which stopped at another part of Myrtle Avenue and connected with the "L". Now that sounded like a good idea to me but I thought I'd wait to see if the next train was getting through.
No it wasn't to be- the next train arrived and a similar announcement- now here come the Jacques Tati piece.... I went down the steps and up the other side to the platform for Brooklyn bound trains just s I reached that platform another train arrived back where I had left and they announced the next stop would be Flushing Avenue so that sounded like the trains were heading over the bridge again. I headed back down the stairs and up to the platform arrving just as they announce the train won't be going beyond this stop. So back down the stairs I rush as the train to Brooklyn was arriving- I checked to see if it was an M or a J and lucky for me it was an M - not so lucky for others who had to leap off again before it headed out. The remainder of the journey to Myrtle Avenue and the subsequent transfer to the L and the the N at 14th Street went without incident. Unfortunately the N stopped at 42nd St for an inordinate amount of time but I wasn't going to get off and walk those 9 blocks I had had enough and was content to sit!