Remain Seated
A family — dad, mom, baby in stroller, four year old boy — walk into the street car. I am sitting on one of those “loner” seats. The boy calls out, “I Wanna Sit down!” I begin to pivot over to rise up and offer the boy a seat, before edging back and correcting course. The dad tells the boy, “No. We’re standing.” With that I remain seated, never mind I am getting off in two stops — this is an important life lesson for the boy.
The boy whines a few more times that he wants to sit down. The mother scolds him, telling him he was the one who wanted to ride the street ca. I get off a stop after I meant to, my way of accomodating the situation. Had I stood up, the kid surely would have become a juvenile delinquiet as a teenager and gone on to be incarcerated as an adult. As it were, I have put him on the path to an advanced degree and a six figure income. On the other hand, there is no telling what the baby in the stroller picked up from the seventy-year old stranger grandma figure who was waving and making smiley faces at him/her. Nothing but trouble for that kid.