Public transportation can be a pleasant convenience for getting around a major metropolitan area, but let Mr. Crankipants’ favorite spouse offer you kids some valuable advice particularly to you recent arrivals who thought it would be, like, awesome to live among the steel, glass and concrete mingled with the aroma of exotic coffees from many lands and vagrants basting in their own filth. It may seem so exciting and wonderfully urban, but keep your wits about you, newbies. For example, not everyone talking to themselves is wearing a Bluetooth. It’s doubtful that the hipster drumming on the plastic pickle buckets by the turnstile is actually soliciting donations for tuition to Julliard, nor is he raising money for tsunami victims as advertised on a cardboard sign last week. The guy sitting across from you on the train isn’t attempting to reset his wristwatch inside his pants, he’s…. oh never mind.
Speaking of reach out and touch someone, another pleasure of public transportation are platform billboards and bus ads. There’s always a new product, service or accidental slip-and-fall attorney you were never aware of until that big box of humanity comes rolling past.
It’s nice to know that Uncle Herbert who’s doing a stretch in the pokey for armed robbery can get in touch whenever he wants and wherever you are to remind you that he’s running low on Pall Malls.
