Consider Public Transportation

I’ve been making a three hour roundtrip commute to my day job via the reliable Chicago Transit Authority for well over a year now. If it’s taught me anything, it’s that if I ever have children – a car is required.

Check out the original photos in Jill Greenberg’s “End Times“

These images flash through my mind as I find myself stuck on a stuffy (and stuffed) bus without the protection of headphones. Without the security blanket known as my iPod, the soundtrack to my world is screams, tears, and tantrums in a round. It’s almost like poetry!

If poetry were the slow music of death and destruction.

I get it. Kids make noise. As a parent or caregiver, you can only do so much to stop them. Do everything you can, damn it! Your kid is killing me. Do you want to be responsible for my death? No. You want me and the rest of this bus to remember you fondly as the parent we want to emulate in the future. The one who consoles their child, apologizes to the public whose aural environment the kid is polluting, and if all else fails, take the kid off the bus.

That’s probably too much to ask. I am fully aware. You must remember what it was like to be childless and naive, don’t you?