This morning I took the train from Mt Prospect because I had to drop my car at the dealership for some work.
Taking a different train is the sort of thing that keeps you on your toes. Typically, you get into a routine that allows your brain to get into a cloudy, auto-pilot kind of mode. You follow the same path from the car to the station, see the same people standing in the same crowd, you head to the same spot, pass the same guy who works on the 25th floor (“Hey George”), and wait for the same train to come to the same spot where you board and sit in the same seat and take the same ride in.
That’s why sometimes I like to mix it up, so today it was Mt Prospect.
While on the platform waiting for the 7:38, everyone shifted into their positions as the train approached. I was observing the overall zombiness of the crowd when some dude ran across the tracks and the train, less than a block from the spot where the guy was, blasted its whistle.
The train stopped and people started boarding.
Once everyone was on the train, a conductor came on the P.A.: “To the guy who ran in front of the train, you’ll have to get off because we’re not moving until you do” and that they would have the police remove him if he didn’t go nicely.
We sat there for a few minutes while the trainmen looked for a guy in a brown jacket. We started moving again, and I figured they found him, but for the rest of the ride they went up and down the aisles of each car, still looking. This was accompanied by several announcements concerning Metra’s annual safety awareness program which starts on October 1.
I’ve always believed in Natural Selection and that stupid people are the most likely to create their own undoing, but I just don’t want to see it happen before I have breakfast.
I don’t know if they ever found the guy, but here’s hoping he’ll realize that being a few minutes late for work is better than not going at all ever again.