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Tales from the T

Believe me: I had a different post in mind for tonight. “In mind.” I entered the Red Line at South Station just after 6pm. I was eager to return home by 7pm so I could use the hour before dinner in order to bring this excellent idea for a post to fruition.

The subway platform was crowded, even for rush hour. As each minute ticked by, foreboding set in: This was going to be one of those commutes. Cancel your plans and hunker down for the long hual. Hardened commuters eyed each other with unspoken commiseration and sniffed at the unsuspecting day-trippers and travelers with their unwieldy space-consuming luggage and baby carriages.

An automated announcement sealed the dread: “Attention Red Line customers, we are currently experiencing delays due to a switching problem at Alewife Station.” Alewife is the terminus station in the direction we were headed. It is also my destination. I snapped open my cell phone and thumbed out a Twitter text: Delayed on subway due to “switching problems”… Aka “we’re having problems pushing a button.

Even a 10-year veteran of the T such as myself could not have imagined that I would not arrive at Alewife station until 7:10pm. The switching problems had turned a 20-minute trip into a 1 hour and 10 minute ordeal, replete with a man yelling at the conductor over the emergency intercom about how he had to get off the train in order to pick up his handicapped son. The time was mostly spent sitting in a tunnel, reading the newspaper and listening to the exasperated sighs of my fellow passengers.

And that great post that I had “in mind”…. well, it was time for dinner when I got home, and I’m writing this hurriedly and without much thought so I can join my husband in bed. All I can say is I left that post on the Red Line, and it’s stuck in a tunnel somewhere between Harvard Square and Porter Square due to a switching problem at Alewife.

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