Shame On Me
By Sean McVeigh
I’m sure many of you, like me, have that one embarrassing memory (maybe more than one) from years ago that, from time to time, still comes to mind. It could be that time your dog tripped you up and made you eat it while crossing the street in front of a bunch of people. Or maybe when the waiter told you to enjoy your meal and you responded with, “You too,” like he was going to sit down and eat with you. Whatever it is, every now and then, something will trigger it in your brain and that same shame from all those years ago will swell up inside of you. It will make you want to crawl into a hole or contact the FBI about a Witness Protection Program so you can start over somewhere, free from the shame. I’ll bet most of the time if you were to ask, the witnesses of your mortifying acts don’t even remember. Unless that group included a friend, of course — it is their sworn duty to not only remember, but to bring it up as often as possible.
I think shame is a good thing. Shame keeps us humble. No matter how smooth we all think we are, the universe will pop in now and again and knock us back down to earth with some embarrassment. I also think that there is not nearly enough shame these days. Shamelessness is a vice that is rampant throughout our society. Just take my favorite topic to complain about: traveling.
I recently had the pleasure of taking Amtrak from Penn Station to Washington, D.C. As you know, traveling is my kryptonite. Well, it at least exposes me to massive amounts of kryptonite-radiating morons and that usually does the trick. This time, however, I had a very pleasant trip, and there is only one reason for that: the quiet car.
I’ve gone through it before, but we’ve all witnessed firsthand the annoyance of the speaker phone user in public or, even worse, the guy listening to music without headphones. Social norms cannot constrain these people. Why? Because they are shameless! But the quiet car goes a step further. It foresees these miscreants and makes the inexplicit very explicit. There is no confusion as to what the volume is supposed to be in a “quiet car.”
As is to be expected, just having very clearly displayed signage announcing that you are located in the quiet car did not stop some people. Rules don’t apply to them; don’t you know that? But the quiet car on the train comes with something better than signage: an enforcer! As the ticket collector walked through the car, if he heard a conversation, he would politely remind the perpetrators of where they were and what the rules were. Unsurprisingly, there was a shameless pair that brushed their first warning off as a mere suggestion. The second time through, the ticket collector, while still being polite, was much more forceful in, shall we say, laying down the law.
It was glorious! The shame was palpable. As is to be expected, this ticket collector has clearly dealt with this before and knew just the right buttons to push to get these two to lock up their pie holes.
I was on the subway on my way to Penn Station and I noticed that they now announce over the PA system something along the lines of: “Please be respectful to your fellow passengers and refrain from…” and then list all the subway classics. I guess that’s a step in the right direction. There will never be a “quiet car” on the subway (unless you mean when everyone has their head down trying to avoid eye contact with the looney toon that just boarded the train), but I would pay good money to see them take a page out of other trains’ books and have a (well paid!) MTA employee walking the cars, shaming those otherwise shameless.
Shamefully, I’ll admit that it’s not a job I’m signing up for. There’s got to be someone out there crazy enough to do it, though — not all heroes wear capes.
