I snared a seat on the evening rush-hour Red Line. Two burly men in full-length black wool overcoats and business suits stood in front of me. While the rest of the train endured shoulder-to-shoulder forced intimacy with strangers, these men enjoyed an aura of space around them. Their booming voices and imposing statures coupled with their drunken lurchings and frenetic hand motions staved off any interloping contact.

It’s not common to see visibly inebriated businessmen on the subway at 6:30pm. I mean, this is Boston. Everyone knows the only proper method of transport when you’re besotted by spirits is taxi, so that you can hide the shame of your dirty dirty drunkenness from everyone except the nonjudgemental, equally-wasted taxi cab driver.

“You don’t wanna know and I don’t wanna tell you! You don’t wanna know and I don’t wanna tell you!” the man with purple scarf was saying over and over to his friend, who murmured back to him with the demeanor of an earnest drunk. I took note of the purple scarf because it swung not six inches from my face as he clung closer to the railing above our heads.

Then, loudly and annoyed, he half-yelled “Man, don’t make me toot my own horn!” and his friend shushed him and made calming overtures as they both darted looks around the train, as if suddenly aware of their captive audience of 100 silent people.

A laugh swelled in my throat. I’ve always loathed this saying, “toot my own horn,” for it strikes me as both vaguely sexual and scatological. But hearing it said with boozy bravado coupled with drunken anger was a real treat. It almost made up for being tormented by the purple scarf for the duration of my ride.

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.