Years ago my Mets fan son-in-law, he and my daughter toying with the idea of leaving The Big Apple to live in Boston, did a really smart thing: he rode the T.*
“Nope,” he declared, when he finally made it home.** “Too many young people.”
He wasn’t wrong. With its 64 colleges and universities, greater Boston’s demographics are definitely skewed. Some MovingDay/Labor Day weekends, when thousands of people under the age of twenty-five return to this part of the world, I celebrate our region’s abundance of youthful energy. Some years: not so much.
This year, for an abundance of reasons, I teetered. (Pretty sure that our planet’s burning up has made me a little cranky.) But Friday, aka Moving Day, in late afternoon, as I walked in my neighborhood, its sidewalks strewn with all the stuff—like dish drainers and books—no one could deal with after a long, hot day of hefting boxes and furniture, I overhead this:
She: “So how was it?”
He: (Blustery, upset): “It was. . . ” (Stops. Considers; calmly) “I had an experience.”
She: (Pauses; warmly) “Right.”
*The T is what we greater Bostonians call our (ancient, ailing, maddening) public transportation system.
**Did I mention slow, too?