Scenes from the Green Line: T-pocolypse 2011

Editor’s Note: This is a post from last week that I never got up on the blog because, well, basically I was too drunk at RJ’s wedding to do so. Here it is now. Enjoy.

So, we all think the Rapture didn’t happen, but recent events have caused me to think otherwise. Like last night, when my iPod mysteriously died. Or this morning, when I woke up and my iHome was blinking midnight, but the power hadn’t gone out. Or even still, when my bberry blinked an error message of some sort and the word FAIL flashed across the screen before it too died. Everything is collapsing around me. It’s like the Midas touch, but the opposite.

So I can’t say I was too surprised by the T-pocolypse after work today. Living in Boston, I’ve taken my chances with the possibility that one day the entire public transportation infrastructure would collapse. And the day of reckoning has finally come.

Since I leave work at 5:30 now, I was prepared to be in a rush of Red Sox fans on their way to the game. Home or not, there’s usually throngs of people headed to Kenmore Square in the summer. So when I got below ground at Arlington Station, I was not surprised to see hundreds of people swarming about the platform waiting for their train. It was hot. It was sticky. It was unpleasant to say the least. But after 5 minutes of waiting for the D Line train in front of me to move, I began to worry that there was a problem. Turns out, a passenger had fainted on the train, and EMTs needed to be called in. Obviously, this shut down the entire Green Line. Because someone fainted. Boston, I shake my fist at you.

The T was evacuated, and in the distance you could see a crowded B line waiting to approach the platform. Because someone fainted. Fainted?!? Ok, I’ll stop.

An MBTA veteran, I realized this wasn’t going to be rectified anytime soon, so I made my way to street level. But first, I approached a T worker to inquire about bus routes.

“Are there any buses to Cleveland Circle?”
“No.”

Informative.

Out on Arlington Street, the scene was something like the end of a concert at Madison Square Garden. Everyone’s looking for a cab, and there are hardly any to be had. Since the streets around my office are all one way, I figured I’d work my way to the intersection, cutting off any cabs making the turn. This was a great idea, which made me think that I possibly had some kind of survival skills, when some chick started to one up me. Everywhere I moved, she went a few steps ahead of me. Seriously, we did this for about 5 minutes, slowly moving toward the Common, until she literally threw herself onto a cab. Oh, so this is how we’re gonna play it? Game. On.

I moved into the middle of the street. If a cab didn’t want to stop for me, it was going to have to hit me. And just as I started cursing myself for living in a city that shuts down when someone faints (I know, but I can’t get over it) a cab driver went flying by screaming that he was dropping off in front of the Four Seasons. I broke into a sprint (which for me is more like a light jog). But as I rounded the corner to the Four Seasons alleyway, I saw some girl wave down the cab and try to hop in, like it’s oh so easy to hail a cab during a T-pocolypse. Well, it’s not, and I was prepared to fight to prove my point.

But as it turns out, I’m not an evil bitch, and I took one look at this girl, with her 14 work bags and humidity hair and I felt bad for her. So with no idea where she was headed, I offered to share the cab. What a terrible idea.

Turns out she missed the train before the one that got stopped because she was in a fight with her boyfriend. Apparently he wouldn’t tell her where they should meet after work, and she flipped out, and he’s going to pay for the entire T-pocoplyse. They went to Ithaca together, he moved to Boston, she’s from New Jersey (which is not at all like Jersey Shore, shocking, I know) but moved to Boston for him, so like, the least he could do is tell her where they should meet after work. And they’re moving in together in about a month, which, judging by our cab ride, might be a bit premature. This is about all I could get out of her, before she just decided to randomly get out on some street corner in Brookline, but I did observe that she was ferociously texting and her boyfriend kept calling her to tell her that he was changing locations, i.e. he was ducking her, or at least, that’s the conclusion I came to. She also couldn’t work the cab’s credit card machine and I had to literally smack her hand out of the way and do it for her, which is totally rude, but I was wearing a dress and sticking to the cab’s leather seats, so I wasn’t in the mood for nonsense.

My cab driver dropped me off next to my parking space in Cleveland Circle, and money-wise, the whole thing kind of worked in my favor, because the NJ chick paid the majority of the fare. And I ended up getting over to my second job pretty early, which also works in my favor, because it means more money in my paycheck. I started to think that maybe things were looking up. The bad Rapture energy has been dismissed! People are good at heart. And everyone’s going to have an Independence Day-like celebration at midnight when we all realize we’ve survived T-pocolypse 2011….not too fast.

While I don’t want to implicate my second place of business by naming where it is, I will say that there are men there that play basketball. And as it turns out, the T-pocolypse also caused all the highways to be jam-packed. Meaning all the teams were late. As well as the referees. Which put everyone in a bad mood. We had two fights. One injury. And a lot of cursing. Which left me telling everyone that they just needed to “put some good vibes out there.” Clearly, this did nothing. When the night came to a (delayed) close, everyone was miserable, no one played well, and I was exhausted.

All because someone fainted.