Give me rush hour any day

Today I got on the train at 7 am to go to work. I worked from 8 until 7 pm. Then I got back on the train at 7:30 pm to come home. The city, like all cities I suppose, is in the midst of its construction season which means that randomly at "off-peak" hours there is only one viable set of tracks for both north and south bound trains. Apparently 8:00 pm on a Tuesday is an off-peak time. I sat somewhere between Belmont and Southport for 25 minutes. At the back of my car was a mother (a term I loosely use after an eleven hour work day) with a screaming child. I did not turn around to see how old the child was, and my age guessing skills are weak at best, but from its pitch and clarity I'm guessing under four years old. After six screams in a row I heard the mother encouragingly say something along the lines of "Wow, that was a good one, what a great scream" to which the child screamed again in gleeful response. This went on for the entire time we were stopped and all the way to Western where they got off.

I have never pretended to understand children. What I do understand is that being a parent is hard god damn work. Kids, even when done right, are a difficult, trying, and complicated experience. Today, more than others, made me glad that the kids I do know (1.0, 2.0, Jett, etc.) are being raised by folks that I truly believe are going to do a damn fine job (and hopefully will never encourage their kids to scream at the top of their lungs repeatedly in an enclosed form of public transportation). And it also made me glad that my apartment was empty when I got home.