Words to live by

   
Apropos of nothing, and at no cost to you, today I'm going to share a guiding principle that has kept me out of trouble for the past twenty years:

Never run for public transit.

That's it.  Sounds simple, doesn't it?  Even trite.  But believe me, this personal motto has proved its worth to me time and again. 

The genesis of my rule can be traced back to a Friday night in December of 1987.  Three friends and I were riding the northbound bus on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, headed to Har Mar Mall to see Prince's concert film Sign "O" The Times.

At the Snelling/University Avenue bus stop, I saw something terrible happen.  A woman carrying a bag of groceries in each arm was desperate to make it onto our bus.  The problem was that she was on the southbound side of Snelling, and she had four lanes of traffic to cross, against the light, if she was going to reach our bus. 

Instead of accepting that she was going to miss the bus (which I grant you is a total pain in the ass), the woman saw a slight opening in the heavy traffic and began a sprint from the curb.

She took three steps, slipped on some ice, and fell on her back in the middle of the road.  A fraction of a second later, a white Oldsmobile sedan drove over her.

The driver slammed on the brakes, and I watched a horrific scene unfold in what felt like slow motion.  Rubber screeched, and the poor woman was bounced back and forth beneath the car's tires before finally being pitched out toward the curb.  As pedestrians rushed to help her, other people frantically waved down cars to stop so she would not be hit again.

A choked gasp was the only sound I could make.  No one else on my mostly empty bus, including my happily chatting friends, appeared to have seen the accident.

Seconds later we pulled away from the stop, and I sat in shocked silence for several minutes before being able to tell my friends what I had witnessed.  It was the most awful thing I have ever seen, and I never pass through that intersection without remembering that poor woman who made a stupid snap decision and paid such a heavy price.  I looked in the newspaper for several days, but I never did find out if she survived the accident.

Several months later, I saw something similar, though not quite as grim, happen in Vienna, Austria.  Running to catch a tram outside the Westbahnhof, I saw a man be hit by another tram that came around the corner on a parallel track.  He was only struck a glancing blow, but he was badly hurt. 

"Hmmm," I thought, "running for that tram was a bad idea."

A final incident, also in Vienna, forever cemented my motto in my mind. 

A young couple with toddler in a stroller stood behind me on the long, long escalator down to the U1 subway line.  Near the end of the escalator, I could see the train pulling into the station. 

The man shouted, "Run, or we'll miss it" and the couple began jostling as fast as they could down the left side of the escalator.  (Links gehen, rechts stehen) 

In her haste, the mother accidentally tipped her apparently unrestrained toddler out of his stroller, and he proceeded to tumble head over heels down the sharped-edged steel stairs. 

He probably bounced down eight steps before landing in a limp heap at the bottom.  Without missing a step, the father hauled the boy up by the hood of his coat, and, incredibly, with the wife carrying the empty stroller, all three made it into the subway car a split second before the doors closed.

As the train sped away into the dark tunnel, I could see the shocked little boy begin to scream.   But hey, they didn't miss their ride, so it all worked, out, right?

The next train, the one they simply COULD NOT afford to wait for, arrived four minutes later.

See, people running for a train or a bus do stupid things.  They don't look where they're going, because they're fixated on their ride.  They take enormous risks for no greater reason than a desire to be on time, or to not stand another ten minutes at a frigid bus stop.  It's just not worth the risk.

However, I will admit that I have violated my own rule on one occasion. 

In 1993, during a visit to Berlin, my friend Kindra and I went to a 11:00 p.m. screening of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula.  Just before the closing credits rolled, Kindra leaned over and whispered in my ear, "I know about your whole not-running-for-public-transit thing, but the instant this movie ends, we have to HAUL ASS to catch the last subway home, or we're stuck for the next two hours on the night bus home." 

I broke into a cold sweat, but I held my tongue.

The lights came up, and we began our breathless sprint toward the U-Bahn station.  We arrived just as its gates were being locked, and since it was Germany, no amount of pleading could convince the imperious staff to let us catch our train.

And thus, I had violated my sacred principle, and I STILL had to ride the night bus.

So again I say:

NEVER RUN FOR PUBLIC TRANSIT.

There are worse things than missing a bus.

A public service announcement brought to you by

~WG

Comments

[Kellie]

My cousin was hit and killed by a tram in Vienna. Always look both ways before crossing the street too.

[Eva]

This is so wise I sent it to at least 5 people. Another horror story: while in London, I saw a little kid with his father dashing for the subway. Short version: spritely dad gets on, lagging kid does not, and the train pulls away. Luckily, someone on the platform got a station attendent, and the kid had a phone number written inside his jacket. I didn't stay to see what happened - no doubt something involving the police and Child Services.

[Renada]

Sean, very powerful PSA. My husband is the mad-dasher of public transportation. The first time I visited DC with him (his hometown) it was all a blur, because he was constantly pulling me from one metro station to another.

[Richie Rich]

You are so famous! If some newspaper doesn't snatch you up for a weekly editorial, they're crazy. Seanie always tells a compelling story. I'll think of you next time I'm sprinting for a bus!

[ks]

Wow, I have to come clean--I'm a compulsive public-transportation-mad-dasher. As a matter of fact, my kids and I ran wildly down a crowded platform this AM to catch our tram. And we still would have been on time to school even if we had to catch the next one. This gives me food for thought.

[Eikon]

I concur I never run for public transit.

[sarah]

Wow. That's a motto I'll not forget soon. Lucky for me, though, I rarely ever take public transit.

[Mel]

I'm with you. Of course, I pretty much never took public transit in the Twin Cities, it being what it was 13+ years ago. And I'd sure as hell never have tried to cross Snelling with oncoming traffic.