Getting on the red line at Park Street and heading outbound (north) is, by far, one of my favorite things to do in Boston. This is not for the leisurely, Saturday afternoon people-watchers. Alewife-directed redliners are a mosaic of humanity. Characters range anywhere from popped-collar-Polo Harvard students with the whole world at their feet to people who carry their world in multiple plastic bags (heartbreakingly, sometimes plastic bags are their world).
At each stop, increasingly more interesting people get on. I've over-heard conversations where I swear I was dumber by the time I got off the train. On that same ride, I also picked up what the next "it" book would be. This occurred when one woman got off reading said book and another woman took her spot reading the same book. The many contrasts I see between people just on that line alone fascinate me. People get on in Southie and get off in Cambridge. Just in one train ride, passengers travel the equivalent of Wyandotte to Blue Valley.
"Where are they going?" I silently ask myself as a majority of them file out at the Harvard Square stop. I think this is what I have found most rewarding about my time in a big city; the bustle of a million different people going a million different directions, and I try to figure out their story. I wish I had the eloquence to write how much I have learned just from riding the subway in Boston.
...Hope the lesson is worth paying off loans the rest of my life.
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