I understand that it’s hard for people who get into their cars and drive to work to sympathize with the plight of the public transit commuter. Take Monday, for instance.

I had to return two heavy and awkward wall shelves to a store in Manhattan . They totaled 22 pounds. When I had purchased the shelves on my lunch hour, I deposited them in my office, and took one home at a time. It seemed like a drawn-out process to do the same on the return trip, and I’d postponed the inevitable long enough that my 30-day refund policy was about to expire. Monday was the day.

For those of you tooling around in a vehicle, you would pop the shelves into the trunk of the car, and this would be the end of the story. But not for me.

I put each shelf into a separate bag, banged them down 5 flights of stairs from my apartment, slugged about one-half mile to the subway station, banged down another flight of stairs underground, and squeezed through the turnstiles.

Did I mention it was raining? Of course it was.

By the time I reached the station the shelves and I were soaking wet (can’t use an umbrella if you’ve got a shelf in each hand). Not giving it a second thought, I’d used paper bags which quickly disintegrated into a soggy mess. So I then hoisted each shelf under an armpit. I was thankful at least I wasn’t wearing light-colored pants which would show every drip and drop of mud below the knees. This is something not mentioned in your “Big Apple Welcome Packet" when you move to the city, but you learn only after a few bad thunder/snowstorms. On the train, I tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible, propping the shelves up against the pole.

This wasn’t the first time I’d carried a ridiculous item on the subway. One memorable experience involved an aerobed. In the store, the aerobed seemed manageable, light even. The clerk attached those fantastic plastic handles to the box, necessity being the mother of invention in a city where everyone has to carry everything. The subway station was a mere two blocks. I barely made it to the corner before I had to stop to rest, panting and heaving worse than an emphysema patient. When I reached the station and made the long flight down to the turnstile, I gave up. I perched the large box on the edge of the top stair and gave it a swift kick. The box tumbled, flipped and skidded to the first landing. I did it again (it felt so good) to the bottom of the stairs.

A large man, who looked like he burrowed holes in the ground for a living, had been watching me. “Can I help you?”

Sweat dripping down my face and back, I nodded yes. Oh yes! He carried the aerobed through the turnstile and all the way to the platform, then turned and headed back up the stairs to another train line. When I finally got the thing home, pushing it along the sidewalk, I noticed on the side of the box the product weight was 30 pounds.

On Monday no one was offering to help me with my shelves. But I made it. Sure, my mascara was streaming in lines down my cheeks, my hair was a tangled rat’s nest, and my fingers were swollen red sausages, but it didn’t matter. I made it and I vowed right there that on Tuesday I would bring to work nothing larger than my cell phone.

Jacquelin Cangro