Look, more thoughts on public transit

As I was getting on the (very crowded) train home from work last night, I realized that the T during rush hour is really just the Trust Fall, writ large.

If you have never been to camp, or on a ropes-course field trip, or somehow otherwise managed to avoid the Trust Fall experience, it's pretty much exactly what it sounds like:

You stand, either with your back to one person, or in the center of a group of people, and you let yourself fall over. It's all about relinquishing control and believing that the people around you won't let you fall and break your face. Normally, this works out particularly well because everyone is under the supervision of camp counselors or field guides or whatever so even if you're paired with the girl who stole your care-package the night before, you don't actually let her fall on the ground.

On the T, however, there are no field guides.

Yet somehow, it still works out. Yesterday, I was supported by a stranger's backpack. My safety net was a strange man who refused to take off his Foakley sunglasses even though we were in a tunnel, under ground.

I trusted that, even though I was trapped in the center of the train and had nothing to hold on to, if we came to a sudden stop, my fellow travelers would not let me fall. Somehow, this led me to trust that they would not steal my wallet, stick gum in my hair, or do anything else unsavory either.

And they didn't! For the time being, the city of Boston and I have reached an odd, frozen, zen-like peace.

Although I still think that sunglass guy was a little weird.