Wag

As I and others get off the train at State and flow down the narrow platform to the exits, people pour out of passages from the Blue line and down the stairs from outside to rush across the platform to the Orange line, and squeeze in before the doors slide shut. They run, push strollers, hobble on crutches, pull suitcases, swing backpacks, drag children, wave to their friends to hurry up. Coming around the corner of the elevator, I run smack into wide-eyed working women moving full speed through me. Oops. I see intense faces close up one after another. The platform signaler watching the doors waves a flashlight when everyone is inside; the doors shut and the train takes off.

Today I saw a group of, I guess, middle schoolers, a couple of boys and two or three girls, congregated around the entrance of one tunnel. The day-glow vested signaler behind me said something to them. One of the boys called something back, everyone, especially the girls, laughed, and then another boy, short, brown skinned, with short hair, took a few steps forward, swinging his hips, wagging his finger in front of pursed lips, saying 'no, no, no, no' to the T employee at the edge of the platform.

I don't know what the issue was but the face of that saucy child using a gesture surely learned from someone in his family stuck in my mind. 'You, little child, are pathetically mistaken if you think anything you do makes any difference at all to me or us,' is what it said to the signaler. What the man replied I don't know because I passed quickly by.

Groups of kids that age love to laugh at other people, at each other, at what makes them nervous, and at nothing in particular.This froward, arrogant little boy sashaying forward, waving his finger, his audience tittering in the background, deserved some kind of a slap down. That pouting, insolent face wasn't what a hard-working underground worker should have to deal with in the hurly-burly of rush hour.

Oh, wag, you're part of a long, ignoble tradition of scoffers, fleerers, mockers, jeerers, the menagerie of (often besotted) mob material and taunting trolls. The world exists only as gist for your gibes.

You'll probably grow tired of that defiant, dismissive stance, and move on to real relationships some day. But you, annoying little bantam boy, you were bad so beautifully today.