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Tailtiu

You scored 26 Tailtiu, 17 Brigid, 3 Aine, -1 Macha, 18 Rhiannon and 8 Cerridwen!

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I have a bunch of nicknames for my wife. Terms of endearment, and of course some she likes better than others. I call her sugar boogger for example. She doesn’t like that nickname. I stole it from a cartoon my son used to watch when he was little. Jimmy Neutron maybe, I can’t remember. Regardless, the dad called the mom that in the Show. Anyway Larissa is a little annoyed by it, but she still smiles a little at the humor in it. So I keep on.

Of all the nicknames I use however, Riss is the most common. It’s a nickname some of her family use and that’s how I picked it up. She doesn’t like most people to use it though. It’s gotta be someone close or she’ll bristle at it as unwelcome familiarity. Anyway the fact is I mostly call her Riss, and that’s the fact to remember because it’s important to this story.

The next fact is I’ve had to move a lot over the years. When you do that you keep boxing, un-boxing, and re-boxing your stuff. Eventually you end up with some boxes you never got to in between moves. Things you’ve hung on to, cause you want that stuff, but have kept in storage thru several residences. After each move you say “I gotta go thru crap and figure out if I really want it”.  When you do sometimes you find treasures, & sometimes not. Well I was going thru this box and in with some files I found an old folder from my high school days. It had papers from role-playing games in it.

Now back then D&D wasn’t the polished high class game of the socially elite it is today. Back then you had to be the kind of person a geek would consider a geek to play. This was not just the era of the small paper back rules, this was the 1^st edition days. I would tag along with my older brother and attend the weekly meetings of the Strategy Games Club at the local University. So, being the high school kid in a club of college students, the most common character class I tended to play was whipping boy, or sometimes sidekick. Well on one of these old character sheets in this old folder was a reference to another character in the same game, my brother’s character.

So how does this story end? You see my brother wanted a name for that character that would mean respect. So he took such a word spelled backwards for his character. He took the name Ris. The joke on me is here I am looking back over thirty years later and I find out I’m married to my brother’s D&D character. Larissa thought it was pretty funny.

Last night I got home from work late. Pick was in town, so I stopped on the way home and met him in front of Faneuil Hall, & we went to the Black Rose for dinner. It was great to see him and talk, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about the trip home.

Meeting up with Pick meant I didn’t get to Forest Hills T stop until about 8:30 to 9:00. So I wasn’t on my normal routine, and I’ve no idea if what happened is standard late at night by the Forest Hills stop. I got off the T, and was waiting for the bus for the last leg of my trip home when I heard someone yelling behind me.

One of the busses I don’t take was pulling out and somebody was yelling “Stop, Stop”. A second later this guy runs by me really fast. First thing I think is he’s not going to make that bus, because they don’t tend to stop once they start on their way. Then I thought to myself, is that a gun in his hand? I’m still not sure. However then I heard the yell again, “Stop, Stop”. It wasn’t a guy trying to grab a bus; it was the cop after him that was yelling. Seconds later three Cops run past me on each side. They’ve got guns out too.

The dude they were after was fast. He cleared the entire bus bay in seconds, and headed off down the street with the police right on his tail. I don’t know if they ever got him. The bus I caught a little later headed down the same street, I saw a bunch of cop cars, with police milling around them, but didn’t get much of a view. Never did hear any gun shots so that’s a good sign.

I doubt they got that worked up over someone jumping the subway gate.

Most everyday I ride the Orange line into work. For non Bostonians that’s the subway line on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), other wise know as the T, that all the cool Bostonians ride. If you need more info please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VMSGrY-IlU

I ride almost the full length, from the southern end, Forest Hills station to almost the northern most stop, Malden Center. When one enters the gate to the platforms, if you look right or left you will often see a uniformed T employee watching over the entry. I’ve always assumed this was to be sure some kids didn’t try to jump the turnstile/gate. I was wrong. This was just ageism on my part to assume the hoodlums attempting to cheat the system would be the youth of our community.

A couple of weeks ago, I stepped up to the gate and swiped my pass over the magnetic reader and the gate opened. Just then an elderly lady to my left planted her cane in front of me, blocking my steps, and quick as a wink entered on my card. I was shocked and stood there dumbfounded at not only her speed for her age, but at the fact that I’d just been ripped off by somebody’s nana. The woman behind me started to roar with laughter and started shouting “did you see that, did you see that”. This of course lead to everyone looking at me, including the T security (with suspicion I might add), while the little old lady calmly walked down the stairs to the train.

Now, I have an unlimited ride monthly pass so it didn’t really cost me anything, but she didn’t know that. Since that day I’ve been watching my fellow riders a little more closely. Although I haven’t seen her again I have notice a little old man who stands very close to the person in front of him in line and scoots in right behind them on their ticket. I’ve seen him do this twice. I expect because this is rush hour, and nobody is actually jumping over the gates, security doesn’t seem to notice.

Personally I’ve nothing against the elderly getting a break on riding mass transit. I imagine this is an issue for anyone on a fixed income or at a stage in their life where it’s no longer safe for them to drive. I just think there has to be a better way than to have them attempting to scam the system. Maybe we should have the T employees trained with trivia questions for elderly riders. If they’re old enough to correctly answer a question on Milton Berle or Lawrence Welk then they ride for free.

Just an idea.