The Red Line

Perhaps their is no place more interesting or annoying than the Red Line here in Chicago. From what I've been able to gather so far in my few short months of living here, it is the busiest of the CTA trains running south to north in Chicagoland. As with any form of public transportation what makes it interesting and annoying as hell at the same time, are the people who ride.

There never seems to be a lack of three screaming kids running back and forth, apparently with no parental guidance. That is until you look at the end of the train car you are in and notice mom sitting in that little alcove with one seat, somewhat separated from the rest of the car, with an empty stroller and a cell phone glued to her ear. Now i can deal with the kids being a little crazy, after all they are just kids. I remember when I was but a wee little lad myself, my mother had the horrid task of riding cross country on a Greyhound bus with me and my little sister. The difference being that my mom gave a damn and would not have let us run around like a banshee.

Spending the past few months getting in touch with people from high school after almost twenty years and being bum rushed with all the photo's that I personally have not seen in almost as many years from our high school days has been overwhelming at times. I mention this as I wonder if the three high school kids who I had no choice but to sit next to today will realize in twenty years just how stupid they were on this day.

I take comfort in the fact that seeing as how my senior year was spent on a little island in the middle of the ocean, there were limits to our choices in fashion, hair styles and let's face it the 80's lingered on for several years into the 90's as much as we might have wished they didn't. The kids on the train today had no such excuses for anything they were doing in fashion, hair or speech. I honestly felt that I was sitting next to a more politically correct 90210, and I am not referring to the new show, but the original.

Remember that Valley Girl that had the most annoying voice you have ever heard, who also did not seem to understand the difference between actually speaking and singing? "Oh my goddd, can you believe him, he was sooooo groooossss. I was like....and theeennn he wennnt....and this one time at band caammmpppp....".

This girl that I was sitting next to the whole time never shut up throughout the trip and although she departed the train by herself, the conversation apparently continued in her head. I learned many things today about this young woman, and I use the term loosely because from her conversation today loose is the operative word. She loves people knowing her name so that she can walk through the hallways at school and people will acknowledge her, though I'm skeptical as to why. Her life's goal is to be able to whistle, which she was able to do when she was younger by blowing through the gap in her front teeth, which no longer exists. She also is not sure if she wants to do the nasty with a boy, a girl, or a just by herself. Any of the three of these options were up in the air for her. It wasn't until I finally saw her, for I was afraid to even acknowledge her presence lest I should be sucked into her conversation somehow, that I realized that she would be doing the nasty all by herself for quite some time to come in the future.

Now do you remember also that white girl in school that thought she was black, or vice-versa the black girl that thought she was white? Well she made up one third of this little group today and had she not been so obvious in her endeavor to be something she wasn't, I may not have even noticed her. Now everyone is totally entitled to act and behave in whatever way they feel is being true to themselves. The problem I see is when people try to be someone they know nothing about and stick their noses up and look down on people, for no other reason than total and utter ignorance.

I honestly felt sorry for the guy in this threesome. This poor dude was stuck with two girls who were so annoying, to point that I almost turned to them and asked them please shut up or get off the train before I went bi-polar on them. The formally gap toothed valley girl had such an obvious crush on this guy, and this guy wanted to smack the shit out of her, you could just feel it in the air. Who ever he was texting back and forth along the way would have made much better company for him than two chicks stuck in whatever world they were in.

I often think that it would be so much easier to be a teenager in this day and age compared to twenty years ago. Although I'm confident that I could have come out to my friends in high school and not been afraid of anything, I had the advantage of really being in another world. After today perhaps I am wrong about it being easier to be a teenager, because I ran into a group of them who were searching for who they were in this world and their journey is far from over. As annoyed as I was with these kids today, I envied them as well. Wouldn't it be great if the only thing that we were worried about was learning how to whistle again, since you no longer had that gap between your teeth!