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.

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