A Pilgrim’s Digression

There are three rules to traveling on public transportation: don’t look someone in the eye, don’t touch anyone, don’t talk loudly. A family on public transport usually violates at least two of these rules (touching and talking), to the displeasure of everyone around them.

L'Enfant Plaza Metro station, Washington, D.C.

Last night, on my way out of town aboard an orange line train to Vienna, a family boarded at L’Enfant Plaza. The family consisted of a mother and father, two young boys between ages five and eight, a little girl about age three, and a male baby approximately one year old. The little girl and baby sat in a double-stroller. The two boys sat on a seat with their mother, and the father stood up.

To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention at first. I noted the struggle to get the enormous stroller into the subway car, but otherwise I was preoccupied with the book I was trying to finish reading, Mary McCarthy’s The Group. Gradually, I began to notice them more, though. It’s hard to ignore such an intrusion into the normal course of events on a rush hour train. And as an “intrusion” is exactly how most people saw and experienced this family.

I was seated in a regular seat perpendicular to the window, near a door, and one of the little boys sat down in the seat across from me and parallel with the door. It’s hard to explain the seating arrangement unless you’ve been in a Washington metro car, but basically the two seats near the door create a capital L shape with the back of the L being the seat against the wall and the foot being the seat jutting out from the wall. So the boy sat along the back of the L and I sat on the tip of the foot, roughly beside and perpendicular to him.

It’s a tight space for adults. However, there was plenty of room for the child and me, but he ended up leaning on me throughout most of the ride. My satchel lay on my lap, and he used it as an arm rest. “Eh, it’s not doing me any harm,” I thought, so I didn’t say anything or try to move.

The two children in the stroller sat facing me, completely blocking the aisle. The baby violated the “don’t look” rule by staring at me throughout the ride. I deliberately tried not to smile at him. I don’t want to be one of those people who reflexively smile at babies; it violates some deep sense of myself as a sourpuss.

Overall, there was nothing wrong with any of this. The children were all very well-behaved. The baby started crying once, and the mother settled him with the bottle. With his belly filling up, and the train rocking him, his eyes gradually started to droop and pretty soon he was sound asleep. The little girl and her brothers were all good kids. They talked, but weren’t excitable or noisy or rambunctious. They sat still and didn’t bother anyone around them.

For some reason, though, there was a palpable sense of irritation in the immediate area surrounding this family. Maybe it was the presence of that mammoth stroller that made people feel as if their space was being violated. The train was crowded, and there was a sense that it was more crowded than it needed to be, because of this family and their various equipage.

Or maybe it was the fact that the mother was a loud talker. She was clearly one of those people who have no sense of volume control. You hear everything she has to say, whether you want to or not. When she stood up to give the baby his bottle, she swatted someone’s hand away (presumably her little boy), and said loudly “Don’t touch my butt!”

There was an old white man sitting in roughly the same position on the train as myself, but opposite side of the car. He seemed to be the only one who enjoyed the presence of this family. He smiled and chatted with the little boys, and he boldly said to the mother at one point, “That’s a very white baby!” The mother was African-American; the father was white.

When he made that comment, I fully expected there to be some drama. Instead, the woman said (loudly of course), “Oh yes, the nurse in the delivery room said she wouldn’t have believed he was my kid if she hadn’t seen him come out of me.”

It was at this point the woman next to me nudged me and said, “I’m getting off at the next stop. It’s not even my stop, but I’ve got to get away from…” and she glanced at the mother.

There was something about this woman that just annoyed the heck out of people. At the next stop, I stood up and let my seat-mate out. The father tried to move the stroller aside so she could get around it to the door, but he really didn’t have much room to maneuver. The woman had to squeeze around it with much difficulty.

I offered my seat to the man, so he could sit with his kids, but he declined. So I sat back down.

At this point, the little girl said that she had to go to the bathroom. The mother scolded her, “You should have went when I asked you before we got on the train!”

Every parent has been in that position before. The father took the little girl out of the stroller so she could stand, and he told her to squeeze her legs tight and just hang on. The mother and father started arguing about what was best to do. The father wanted the little girl to wait. The mother didn’t think she could hold it.

“Do these subway stations have restrooms?” The mother asked, to anyone who cared to answer. No one answered.

So I volunteered. “I don’t think they have public restrooms; you might ask a station manager to use an employee restroom though.”

So after some discussion with the husband, the woman decided she would get off at the next station with the little girl and the rest of the family would go on ahead and wait for her. This worried one of the little boys. When the mother and daughter got off the train, he seemed afraid. He asked his Dad, “Where’s Mama going?”

“She’s taking Sister to the bathroom,” Dad said.

“But the train is leaving!” The boy said.

“She’ll catch the next train,” Dad said. “The one right behind us.”

“But how will she find us?”

“We’ll wait at the next stop. I promise, she’ll catch up to us.”

The boy still seemed worried. He moved to sit next to the window and looked out intently, as if trying to see the train that was supposedly behind us.

It turned out, the remaining family members got off the train at the same stop as myself. I lost track of them quickly.

The whole incident called to mind all those studies in which sociologists observe human behavior on trains. Trains are one of the few environments where strangers are forced into close contact for long periods of time. People don’t always react well to close quarters confrontations with others. Children often seem the least welcome members of society, in this environment–too much opportunity for disturbance.

It’s interesting, because you would think people would welcome disturbance of a routine that is, overall, onerous. At the very least, such disturbances provide good material for stories around the dinner table, later.