On the Lam from the Red Line

Addictions often begin innocently enough. Your friend has a bit of pot, for example, so you go ahead and try some. The next time it happens, you really can't say no, I mean, they gave it to you. As a gift! You have to do it. By the third time--the third consecutive day--you begin to wonder if you are developing a habit. You make the first attempt to make a change. Maybe you even start hanging with a new crowd.

So it was that my own life of criminal activity began. The first time, it was completely unexpected. I was approaching the gate in South Station, T pass in hand, when there before stood the open gate. It wasn't closing. So I did what any red-blooded commuter would do: I walked through. Without swiping my pass. I  felt it was recompense for the two hours I spent stuck in the tunnel in May.

The next morning, at Davis, I sensed the absence of T personnel, who actually do sometimes supervise the morning activity. Oh, they are never there when the monthly pass fails, triggering the rapid-fire honking and the alarming message on the screen: SEE AGENT. But when you don't need them, they are there. Anyway, I happened to notice, after a woman passed through the gate ahead of me, that the message on the screen was "ADMIT THREE." Now, I don't know what that's about, I readily admit. But there surely was only one of her. And the gate was still open, so I passed through.

I think I mentioned in a prior post that I lost my T pass in the middle of June. No, that's not as bad as losing it June 2, but I was stung by the lost money and the need to buy a temporary, pay-as-you-go pass. That second time, I felt I had it coming to me.

That evening, on my way home from work, I was actively looking for my opportunity, like a thief looking for a weak victim. I didn't see any T personnel, and I just walked behind a man who had passed through. I said to myself, this gate is going to close right on me, and it started to, but wouldn't you know, it sensed a body and opened up again. I had my T pass in hand, and I was actually constructing a fiction in my head in case someone stopped me after the fact. I scampered down the stairs to the platform, but now the exhiliration was gone. I felt like a common criminal, jumping the turnstile (as we used to say back in the days of turnstiles).

Although no one was around, I worried that there might be cameras. I saw myself as the Whitey Bulger of the Red Line, a grainy image hunted by authorities. So I scrammed. Today I took the Watertown Express Bus, and was treated to a two-hour commute courtesy of a rain storm and terrible traffic downtown.

So, it's true: All criminals pay in the end, one way or another