The Yellow Line

Yesterday, as I sat at my decrepit old desktop contemplating such important matters as, "if I could have dated one star from the 80s, who would it have been?" and "don't people have anything better to do with their time than engage in frivolous legal matters?", I was sidetracked yet again by the folder of my old college papers. Clicking randomly at documents I don't even remember writing, I realized two things:

1) There is a direct correlation between the decline in the quality of my writing and the advent of my 21st birthday,

and

2) I really like writing about mice.

Odd, considering that when my first apartment had a vermin problem, I called every one of my scientist friends and offered them a free under-the-table supply of specimens if they could get the damn things out of my house. Sadly, there were no takers.

In addition to the Tale of the Chuck, I found two more stories prominently featuring animals of the rodent variety. Here's one of them.

***********************************************

“Whatever you do, never stand on or over the yellow line. I mean it. Don’t do it, ever!"

As I stand on the platform at the Park Street T stop, waiting for the Red Line to come whisk me away to my aunt and uncle’s house, the words my mother uttered over 20 years ago echo around me as if they are embedded in the walls. There are hundreds of people milling around the underground terminal, but as those words echo in my head, it’s as if I am completely oblivious to their presence. This is, after all, where I first heard that singular golden rule of public transportation in Boston; it’s also where I first chose to ignore it.

I must have been around six years old when it happened, because I remember how happy I was to be back in the city after moving to New Hampshire a few month before. Due to the fact that we had been “such good helpers” during the move, Mom and Dad had surprised my brothers, sister and me by getting tickets to see Disney on Ice at the Boston Garden. We had enjoyed the parade of ice skating characters, shrieking and giggling each time the villain was beaten, and afterwards the four of us examined our souvenirs as we waited for the train to take us back to our car.

The infant twins looked adorable with tiny mouse ears perched on their heads, held in place by stretchy straps of elastic under their chins. My three-year-old sister, Kelly, had picked out a light-up snow globe on a stick from a traveling salesman at the train stop and was flinging it precariously close to other passengers’ heads as she tried to make it illuminate. I was sitting at my father’s feet, leafing carefully through the shiny program that he had finally bought for me after a lot of begging and pleading on my part. A budding figure skater myself, I was content to look at the pictures and dream of one day performing in the show. Content, that is, until I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and decided to investigate.

Luckily, one of the twins woke up from his nap and started crying at that exact moment, so no one noticed as I tiptoed closer to the platform’s edge to see what was down there. I watched for a few seconds, patiently waiting for whatever it was to move again. I had often come to this station with my parents and grandparents when I lived in the city, and knew that in the dank depths below, there was a tiny creature who liked to scurry across the tracks. In my naivete, I didn’t realize that the little guy was actually one of many rodents in the station, and I held my breath until I saw something run out from under a rock.

There he was! The Park Street mouse!

Of course, as the platform started trembling at that instant, I looked to the end of the track to confirm my suspicion as to the cause. A pinprick of white light had appeared in the blackness of the tunnel, and the red caution light had switched on. The train barreled towards the station, and in my five-year-old brain I realized that if I didn’t do something, my furry little friend was going to be run over.

The warning my mother had given me as soon as I was old enough to understand it rang through my ears: never, ever step on or over the yellow line at a T stop; the train conductor probably won’t see you and, if he does, he won’t be able to stop in time. “Oh well, I’ll be really quick,” I thought and, never taking my eyes off the mouse, took a step off the platform.

I realize now how lucky it was that my dad noticed I had left his feet. He caught me just in time, grabbing me by the arm and yelling at me to get the hell away from the edge just as the train roared into the station. I cried as he and my mom yelled at me for being stupid and not listening to their instructions not because I was embarrassed, but because I thought the mouse was dead. It was a really traumatic event for a child, to first be scared half to death by her father nearly dislocating her shoulder and then to realize that her furry ally had been squished into oblivion by a 30-ton train. Even though my parents later explained to me that the mouse was fine, and that he was used to the trains coming through his house and knew to get off the tracks when the vibrations started, I don’t think I ever fully recovered from what has become known in the family as “The Park Street Mouse Incident.”

The telltale vibration of the floor beneath my feet brings the station back into focus. I am abruptly shaken from my reverie, becoming aware of the other travelers in the station as the sound of my mother’s words sinks back into the walls once more. I look first toward the tunnel, and see the white light of the Red Line train hurtling towards the station. I then look down at my feet, and a slight smile plays across my lips as I observe the entire foot-and-a-half of space that I have placed between myself and the yellow line. A movement on the track catches the corner of my eye, and I imagine that the small mouse scurrying off of the track looks up and remembers me and my misguided attempt to save his life.

The train rolls in to the station, a long blur that stops with a screech in front of me. Laughing silently, I cross the yellow line and step into the car.
******************************************************

Fun fact: I still look for a mouse on the tracks every time I go to Park Street.