Happy Birthday, Alice Anne

Today would have been my mom's 94th birthday. I always remember her on Christmas Eve with a candle.

MBTA Red Line Moment

I can put up with just about anything on the T. For starters, the people who hang by the door when people are trying to get in or out, even when they are obviously in the way.

Or people who talk loudly on the phone incessantly, like the guy yesterday morning who turned his face into the door (yes, he was also hanging out in the doorway) and still managed to share his moronic business call with the entire car.

I've even learned to accept all the commuter with their backpacks, the young and old alike, who don't seem to get that that big honking backpack 1) takes up just as much vertical room as another person, and 2) whenever they make the slightest move the backpack swings proportionately more. Think pendulum.

Yes, I can even, God love them, accept the people who sneeze, cough, or whatever into their hands, then grab the overhead bar--with the hand they just expelled bodily fluid into.

The one thing I cannot tolerate, though--the one thing that's fingernails on a chalkboard to me--are the people with the headphones who have their music on so loud, you can still hear this tinny tune going on. It's like a listening to a dripping faucet. Which is exactly what I finally told the guy this morning on the Red Line who was standing next to me. He was wearing full-size headphones, no less, and you could still hear this tinky, tinky, tinky thing going on.

I tapped his bag. Hey man, can you turn your music down a bit. It's like listening to a leaky faucet.

He did, but he didn't seem too happy about it.