Attention Passengers: The Next Red Line Train to Death is Now Approaching

In case you haven't noticed (maybe you don't take the Red Line twice every day as I do), the Red Line goes very slowly over the Longfellow Bridge. I used to wonder at this, finding it strange and annoying, as the Red Line is otherwise quite fast and smooth, and this bridge part is a blot on its otherwise amazing record. Upon hearing me mention this, my father said that it was indeed peculiar, since he remembered the Red Line going as fast as anywhere else over the bridge. He suggested that maybe after the bridge collapsed in Minnesota a while ago, they decided to be more careful. Then one day on the radio, we heard some mention of people not using the Red Line because of something about the bridge. Wondering what it was that had gone wrong (as I had missed the beginning of the story), I decided to take a risk. Nothing was any different from any other time I took the Red Line, so I relaxed. But the next day I found out that the Longfellow Bridge had been temporarily closed because of infrastructure problems, and that infrastructure problems explained the slow subways. I then joked that since I take the Red Line twice every day, the chance that I would be on the bridge when it collapsed was not quite infinitesmal, let us say. So from then on, I decided to consider the situation of a collapsing bridge while riding the Red Line. I noticed that the doors open sideways, so water pressure would not be a problem if one were trying to escape. I also noticed that there is a slight gap under the doors, so the trains would not be able to float. So escaping before the train sinks would be the trick. I mentioned this to Sachi today, after we had a nice snack of bananas frozen in liquid nitrogen (it's really good, and there's a story to this as well, but I'll leave it to someone else to write about it in the blog if she wants). Sachi thought it was funny that I actually analyzed the situation so logically and seriously. This brought our discussion to the 1950s educational film "Duck and Cover" in which you can learn all about how to be safe in an atomic bomb explosion (you know, like covering yourself with newspaper to block the flash). So now we know what I truly am--paranoid. But when I successfully escape from a train to death, I'm sure you will forgive me.

-Philip