Punting Small Children

Oh, these are here for the cute factor. Now that you've started reading, why don't you keep going?

It’s early September, and you’re slighting nodding off on the subway. The train is spending a little too much time at this stop. Then, you see them. They’re boarding! A family, on their way to the baseball park for a game, all dressed in their home team’s garb. Because you’ve all seen them before, we’ll call them “the Fenway family”.

It starts with the patriarch, a rather red faced man, wearing glasses and donning his red Red Sox track jacket and blue Red Sox hat. A younger looking version of Father Time, he steps onto the train, quickly followed by his wife, a frizzy-haired blond who is also wearing a blue baseball cap. Her husband reaches to embrace her.

Afterward, they are followed by a couple, the daughter and her husband, of course, and they playfully swing onto the train, their three year old child. For purposes of gender neutrality, we’ll call the child “Jamie”. Now Jamie, mother, and father quickly step onto the train, full of smiles, ready to enjoy the game in their wonderful seats, right behind the dugout. The whole family is three generations beaming with excitement, a sharp contrast to the rest of the train, full of people who are saddened, stressed and irritated that the man at the end of the train smells awful and won’t stop his own personal rendition of what you think is “You Light Up my Life”.

Now the train starts to move.

A big “woah” comes from everyone, especially loud from Jamie because Jamie is three and hasn’t fully grasped the concept of indoor and outside voices. Laughing, it takes a few more sways before they figure out that they have to hold to the bar so they won’t fall. Yes, you do have to hold on to the bar because the train isn’t the Superman ride at Six Flags. If you can’t handle that then maybe you should pay for parking in the city.

Both wives cling to their husbands, the younger couple looking content. The wife of the older couple looks like a wide-eyed koala, acting like she’s never been on a train before, just gawking at everything. She points out something stupid like the emergency brake and tries to make a joke out of it. She laughs at her own joke way too hard and the husband laughs too. Then his daughter’s husband tries to make a comment about something else, and the father gives him a fake smile because in truth, he doesn’t really like the guy, but that’s another story.

The train goes stops at another station and people are getting on. Somehow, the Fenway family makes it way more complicated than it needs to be. People get on, you move over right? Wrong.

The logical motion when standing by the door is to move further into the train...

...but rather, the Fenway family stands near the doors, clogging things up and making comments such as, "there's no room to go anywhere", all accompanied by unnecessary laughter, of course.

Eventually, everyone gets on, and again, the Fenway family is laughing. The train keeps moving. By this point, you’re annoyed. How hard is it to stand on the train, shut up, and get off at your stop? But then in the midst of judging, you come onto an epiphany: Jamie is a very puntable child.

If Jamie were a football, you could totally punt* this kid off a bridge or something. You sure would like to, because Jamie just won’t shut up. Once you’ve heard a little kid screech “Mary Had a Little Lamb” once, you’ve heard enough.

*For an example in punting, please see this clip from Anchorman:

But you can resist the temptation as it is their stop and the Fenway family, laughing, gets off.

Maybe I really hate train tourists.

Maybe I just like punting small children.

Do you have your own subway people stories?

Credit for first photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/plushoff/ / CC BY-NC 2.0