Commuting is one of my least favorite things. In my case, I have two choices for how I may commute. The first, is to ride with my wife.  If I wish to ride with my wife, I must be prepared to be late, and to admit that it is nobody's fault, unless my wife gets up late, needs to dry her hair, and losses the keys and races around the house looking for them, in which case, I am required to admit that it is my fault.

If I wish to be accountable only to myself, my lone option is to take the subway.  Boston's subway is regarded as “decent” in the spectrum of mass transport options, but since this tranche on the spectrum also includes  Miami's carnival-rideesque monorail which exists solely to create the appearance of “urban bustle” during opening scenes of movies, Boston's “T” still sucks.

I live on the Green Line, which is the slowest of the lines, and which has a healthy mix of old cars that frequently do not work, and newer cars, which work, but due to train physics, are frequently stuck behind the older, broken, trains.  The newer cars arrived a few years back and though they appear to be much larger than the existing fleet, are actually smaller than the old cars, which were made in France, 100 years ago, when Babe Ruth and Paul Bunyan were the only people over 6 feet tall.  Since I am not an engineer (the fake kind who drives trains, or the real kind of builds them) I can't give a scientific reason for why the new cars manage to be smaller than the old ones, but I think it has something to do with the fact that the new cars have a staircase built in the middle of them which eats square feet and causes all those standing atop the staircase to feel like they are standing in a basement.

A lot of people like to ride the T because they like to “people watch”.  People watching, for those who don't know, is an activity which began about the time people stopped spending all of their time worrying about catching leprosy and involves watching other people in stressful situations, and chuckling to yourself about their pleated khakis.  Sometimes, people watching changes from a mere amusement, to an act of self-preservation when, for example, you are on your way to a constitutional law exam and a person next to you on the train begins singing Polish folk songs in an extremely high voice.  Hypothetically, this person might become so enraged by the fact that she thinks someone else is singing the Polish folk songs that she will tell them to shut up, repeatedly. When the person refuses to stop singing, you might look around to see how you will defend yourself if she decides you are the person singing, just as she throws a scalding hot cup of coffee on your lap.

In a small city such as Boston, there is a good chance that you will get to commute alongside an annoying co-worker, who lives one stop beyond you.  If you are fortunate, the train will be so crowded that he will be forced to stand way on the other side of the train car, and shout to you for twenty minutes about the fact that he can't find a job  until he gets off and you go one stop further to make sure he doesn't know where you live, even though, in a moment of weakness, you told him you would join his poker game.    

If you have to wait for a train where I live, you must stand outside in whatever mother nature has to offer, but if you are lucky enough to be underground, there is a great chance you'll have your experienced sweetened by the charm of street performers.  Boston's laceName w:st="on">GovernmentlaceName> laceType w:st="on">CenterlaceType>, is the epicenter of the city's music scene.  On a good day in the summer, one could conceivably hear a Equadorian man play Simon & Garfunkle cover tunes with pre-recorded synthesizer accompaniment and a guy playing certain notes of guitar over top of a tape recording of Joe Satriani playing different notes on the guitar. 

On days when I'm on my way to work in a crowded car, sweating through my undershirt, smelling the mix of feet, body odor, and cologne I have to wonder if I wouldn't be happier living in some sleepy suburb.  But then I think about the suburbanites who are stuck, all alone, in their SUVs, drinking coffee, listening to Imus, and I decide that I would definitely be happier living in some sleepy suburb.  Sure, I wouldn't be so close to laceName w:st="on">FenwaylaceName> laceType w:st="on">ParklaceType>, but if I'm going to be blamed for being late, I might as well have a leather seat.