Judge Not—But Don’t Hold Up the Line, Either

Oh, good. Now there is a screaming toddler on the train. That makes the evening commute just perfect!

Actually, it doesn’t bother me. Well, not that much, anyway. I’ve sat a row ahead of many a screaming child on airplanes going much farther than the Red Line. You have to forgive a baby. By definition, they don’t know any better. They have no idea how close they come to making the working stiffs on the train break a window to jump into the dark tunnel and onto the tracks.

What really gets me are the adults. The adults who should know how to behave, and yet don’t.

Public Transit Means...You Are in Public

I was running late again. And it was snowing—lightly, but enough to make the bricks on the walkway outside Davis Square station slick and treacherous. So, despite not being as early as I had hoped, I walked slowly. I’m at that age where falling on brick might very well break a bone—not an expected break, I’m not that old. But the kind of a break—like a wrist or an elbow—that can make a person sit up and realize that time is passing, the body is not as resilient as it once was, that all that extra padding on hips and backside is in fact a disguise for the skeleton that withers within.