A parent's (and daily rush hour commuter's) response to the MBTA's stroller ban: Just Say No.

My response to the T's online survey (here's some of the backstory):

I think it's unfortunate that we even have to answer this question.  As if parents who need to use the T with young children have the ability to do this.  How is a single parent with a 6 month-old in a stroller going to fold up a stroller - ask a stranger to hold the baby while they do it?  Put the baby on the sidewalk?  On the bus-stop (or T-stop bench) and hope they don't roll off?  The problem on the T is passengers who make a point of not making room for other passengers just because they don't want to be "crowded".  In my experience there is a certain percentage of the "rush hour demographic" that is bitter about the fact that they even have to ride the T to get to work (these people would be much happier in suburban office parks, sad to say) and they get proportionally more uncooperartive and rude as the train gets more crowded.   Fixing the T's frequent problem with late rush hour trains would do much to alleviate this problem.  Picking on parents with strollers will not -  strollers are a relatively rare occurence on my daily rush hour orangle line commute between Sullivan and DTX,  yet it is often crowded with passengers who are all too often disrepectful and rude to each other.

Religulous

When people get sick and think they may die, they often “find religion”, or so I’ve heard. I got pretty sick a couple of years ago, and although my prognosis was always pretty good, I spent a fair amount of time contemplating my own mortality. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t really sick enough, or maybe it’s because hard core atheism is really just another form of religion, but my own beliefs during that time migrated from agnosticism to atheism.

I'm still an atheist at this point, but sometimes I am amazingly sensitive to my parents’ church being criticized. On that note - a couple of points regarding willful ignorance of Catholicism from American evangelicals that may or may not be directly related to a conversation my wife had this week and then relayed to me. :)

• Matthew 16:18. Church isn't plural. I don’t think this means you have to subscribe to a certain church to call yourself a “Christian”, but, if it did, I'd bet on “the Church”; you know, the one that's 2000 years old (or 1700 years old if you want to split hairs).
• Matthew 4:1-2. Lent is not "something the Catholics made up". It's a word for commemorating an event that is very definitively described in the gospels.

Ignorance is bliss, but it still makes me mad! :)