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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

There's a knife on this train - adventures in city living

I was taking the T home after a busy day at work. I was hungry and tired and still had many stops to go before I made it home. I'm listening to my ipod when I start to hear shouting over the music. I look to my left and see an older man clearly angry about something. I pause my music and hear this older guy yelling at an even older guy. "Fuck you I was in Afghanistan and Iraq! I will fucking stab you, I have a knife." (I highly doubt he was in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I think he's a bit too old for that.) And he did have a knife and not just some tiny pocket knife, he pulled out a rather large folding knife.

The guy he's threatening says something back to him that I can't hear but I can tell that whatever he says pisses off the guy with the knife. "Fuck America, fuck all of you!" A younger guy tries to calm the situation down but the knife is still out. The train stops, the doors open and the guy with the knife gets off the train.

At this point I'm not really sure what to do.  Do I call the police? Alert the T driver? While I'm thinking this over our train is suddenly surrounded by Boston PD. This was within a minute of the guy jumping of the train. The T driver let's us know that we won't be moving for a few minutes. Everyone pulls out their phones and starts tweeting, texting and updating facebook. After a couple of minutes the T driver makes another announcement "sorry about the crazy person". Why thank you for the apology.

The police finally realize that the guy has left the train so we are let go. As the train starts to roll away we see a cluster of police cars up ahead. There's a guy in the middle of about 6 cops, they caught him, the train cheers.

Sometimes you just get a vibe from someone and we all got this vibe. This guy just looked crazy. From what I gather the guy he flipped out on bumped into him. It's the B train at rush hours. If someone doesn't bump into you I'd be shocked. In all my years of taking the T I've never actually seen anyone pull a weapon. I have had my butt groped and a guy threaten to rip my head off for looking at him (fun fact, I hadn't even glanced at the guy) but never a weapon.

Living in the city is always an adventure. I probably won't tell my mother because she worries about my city living life which is funny because she grew up in a rough part of Boston and told me all these stories about how she took care of herself. I think she still thinks that Boston is how it was in the 60s and 70s which was a lot worse than it is now.

14 comments:

  1. Yeesh! Crazy people on the T are a fact of life, but I've never been on a train with one who had a weapon. That's terrifying! I'm glad no one was hurt.

    My mother can be the same way about Boston. I remember once, there had been some murders close together that were in the news, and she told me, "You should stay out of Boston." Me: "Uh, that's a bit difficult since I work IN Boston."

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    1. ha yeah kind of hard to avoid the city when you work and/or live in it. It's really not that bad but parents like to worry.

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  2. That is pretty crazy. Glad you weren't the one that bumped into him.

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  3. It's things like this that make me happy I live in Fargo. Where everyone is nice. And apparently happy.

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  4. This suddenly makes me feel happy about living in a city that requires me to drive everywhere in a car all the time. You can't pull a knife on me in my own cars bitches!

    But i'm glad you're safe!

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  5. Nothing interesting like that happens around me. I want to move to a big city, but crazy stuff like that (and traffic!) scare the living crap out of me.

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    1. It's a lot safer than you'd think. Well at least Boston. I can't speak for all major cities.

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  6. !!! I've never seen anyone pull a weapon. I'm not sure what I would do. Maybe mace them in the eyes.

    And then RUN! Not many places you can run on a train though. Glad you're okay and Crazy Von Nutjob was caught!

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  7. Wow, that is somewhat crazy. Then again, living in my part of Dublin, I've seen many a things and was often woken up when I was younger by gunfire just a little bit away. (I lived in the nice safe part, but the bad, dangerous part was right next to it so go figure)

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  8. This post took me from SUSPENSE of what what going to happen next.. to HAPPY that he was caught. I felt like I was on the train with you! haha sounds like something that would happen here in D.C.

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  9. Aw MAN! I love public transportation! I'm not even being sarcastic! I'm glad everyone was safe though.

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