The subway car was jammed with riders. Everywhere I looked, I saw riders anxious
to leave the subway. One rider was tuned into his iPod and started bobbing his
head along with the music. Another rider, a tall man wearing a pale blue shirt,
tended to his son.
Without warning, the subway car came to a halt. A voice came over the
loudspeaker.
"Please do not panic. We are experiencing mechanical
difficulties."
A man in his late fifties began to protest: "I have a place I
have to be," he said. The woman sitting next to him responded.
"We all have a place we have to be," she said.
I watched all of this exchange as a silent observer. A toddler in the back
of the car started to cry.
Over an hour later, the subway car began to move. People started to gather
their belongings in order to exit the car.
Later, as I reflected on the subway mishap, I realized how crazy my fellow
riders had acted. Despite being in the subway car for over an hour, not one
person in the car had made any effort to befriend their fellow passengers.
Rather, the only words being exchanged were complaints—complaints about Septa,
which runs the public transit system in Philadelphia.
No
one bothered to thank the subway car conductors who had tirelessly worked to
bring the subway car back to life.
I
give those workers so much credit. While we had been trapped underground, they
worked frantically to free us. One worker even went as far as to wedge himself
between the car and the track in an attempt to get us back on schedule.
Septa
subway conductors are reminders to all of us that heroes exist in all kinds of
different forms.
Thank
you, Septa, for getting me to my Sunday destination as safely as possible.
Trackback(0)
|
blogs 
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
