Bring Your Child To Work

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Fri 27 Apr 2007

See You Next Year, Kiddies!

Posted by TJ under Bring Your Child To Work, Uncategorized
[2] Comments

As Bring Your Child to Work Day wound to a close yesterday, one defining image of the day will stay with me. The 6:10 to Mount Kisco was somewhere between Valhalla and Hawthorne when a dad attempted to lead his young son from one car to the next as the train hurtled ahead.

Mind you, it wasn’t one of those door connections that’s sealed off from the outside, assuring you won’t crash to the rails and die. This one was wide open, and the kid was out in the middle of it.

Mercifully, in the car the man and his son were looking to enter, the engineer had left his booth door open, barring entry into the car and forcing the man and his son to return to the car from which they came.

What was the man thinking? Hey kid, here’s how we save ourselves 30 seconds of walking on the platform once we get off the train?

 

Thu 26 Apr 2007

Explaining “Catenary Wires” To Your Kid

Posted by TJ under Bring Your Child To Work, New Haven Line, Rye
1 Comment

I spotted a few thigh-high tykes on the train this morning, and remembered it was Bring Your Kid To Work Day (formerly Bring Your Daughter To Work Day).

That got me thinking: If yesterday’s Great New Haven Line Debacle had happened a day later, or Bring Your Kid To Work Day had happened a day earlier, what sort of mess that would’ve created.

For starters, the already jammed platforms would’ve had dozens more bodies, however small. Already irritated parents would’ve been extra-protective of little ones being crushed between irate passengers or getting shoved a little too close to platform edges for comfort.

Parents would’ve had to explain why trains were flying by without stopping. And once a train did stop, imagine the sight of parents and their offspring clamoring for a few square inches on a jammed train, some poor kid cheek to cheek with some guy’s arse all the way from Rye to Grand Central.

Perhaps it would’ve soured parents on the whole Bring Your Kid… concept for years to come, not to mention the kids themselves–yes, a whole generation of moppets might’ve decided that that commuting thing Dad or Mom does just isn’t for them.

Speaking of parental units, our own father, himself a former commuter with decades’ worth of war stories, is in town. We’ll tap him for a few of those stories, to be shared tomorrow.