As I worked my way and my luggage up the steps and onto the Acela train headed for Union Station, I plopped down into the first two available seats. I then hurriedly began the dance, shuffle, swirl where I tried to organize my things so as not to slow up those making their way down the aisle behind me.
Once everything was in place, I breathed that universal, sigh of relief: finally. I had made it. Off the plane. Onto the transit bus. To the ticket window. Over the bridge. And now, onto the train headed for my destination.
It was the instruction card in the seat pocket in front of me that suddenly caught my eyes once I was settled in. And I must admit, it conjured up an unexpected laugh. Which I quickly attempted to stifle.
“Do not exit the train while it is moving.” Really? Do people do that? Oh my.
(I also happened to notice it was in Braille as well. Hmmmmmm.)
It got me to thinking. Aren’t there certain things that should just be understood? You know, we call them “Givens”. But alas, a multitude of today’s population somehow never quite got the memo.
You know, like the one that reads:
– Dear young couple in the plane seats next to me. You do not need to be physically on top of each other and kissing throughout the entire flight. Honest. You will live long enough to do that once we land at the end of our 90 minute flight. And oh, yes, there are single people in the world that just don’t need that today. I, would be one of them. (Sigh.)
or
– Dear lady: Please cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough.
or
– Dear sir: When I am trying to get on the escalator, there is no need for you to race me. We will both get to the bottom (preferably with both of us still standing) if you will just wait your turn. (Some of us were fortunate enough to receive that “wait-in-line-lesson-thing” back in kindergarten, but I digress…)
So, you can imagine my chuckle when the instructions in front of me kindly reminded me to stay in the train until we reached our destination and until it had stopped.
I am pleased to report, I followed the directions.
In today’s day and age, guidelines are sometimes considered so “old school”. It seems we agreed to throw them out of our lives and our culture in the 60s I guess? Not sure. But I do know that perhaps, etiquette, rules, instructions, directions and plain old warnings and guidelines just might not be such a bad idea after all.
Just my thoughts,
S.
