Subway Stories - Red Line No. 1

That night the moon was full and people were acting accordingly. It’s amazing that depending upon the moment you see someone, they can appear so differently based on their choice of words, actions, and general demeanor.

I was on the southbound Braintree train taking the T home from work and hoping to do some reading as usual. Three boys got on the southbound Braintree train. They were around eleven years old, jumping up and down, running and talking loudly – raging hormones in full effect.

They zoomed in on a pretty young woman, maybe about nineteen, and stood near her talking about what they would like to do her – in more graphic terms than I would like to write here. Although she was not that many years older than them, she reacted to them as a parent. “If I were your mother, I’d smack all of you,” she said. Clearly they were unprepared for her response and just stared at her blankly.

After a couple of minutes, the train pulled into the JFK stop and the biggest boy of the trio got off. The little one, the loudest of them all, who had previously been talking “shit this” and “bitch that” among other sordid things – suddenly sat in his seat quietly and gazed down toward the floor. If you had just walked in, he would have looked like the sweetest freckled-faced long-lashed little boy you had ever seen. Transformed right before my eyes.