From the Mind of Meegs

[Pauses for general readership to ask: is commuting all she's EVER going to talk about from now on?]

In the four weeks I've been commuting downtown, I have grown weary of non-commuters. The location of my office is surrounded by shopping and by other tourist-type attractions. So while us working folk usually fill the streets during the morning and evening hours, the lunchtime/afternoon streets are often choked with people lollygagging over leisure pursuits. I cannot suffer this.

I like my fellow commuters because we all are in pretty much the same position, and thus we all naturally abide by an unspoken code. We've got places to go and people to see and time's a-wastin'. Stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours. No unnecessary chatter. No looking at the bright side of things. Move. Go. Do.

To avoid the non-commuters, I often travel through an underground pedway that connects several buildings within a few block radius. This pedway has shops running through it, and it does offer shelter during cold and precipitation. But really, the thing I love best about it is the fact that the pedway is little known to all except those of us who spend every day working downtown. The pedway walkers are all people who have places to go and people to see and time a-wastin'.

I can't help but think of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. In Wells' story, the world has split apart into two races. One race lives above ground and is happy but also lazy and ill-prepared for the rigors of the world. One race lives below ground and is mean and predatory and feeds, literally, on the lollygaggers up top. The social undercurrent suggests that the above-ground race is descended from rich bitches who never learned how to do anything for themselves, but spent their lives whiling away the hours and building their empires on the backs of the laborers. The underground race is descended from the laborers who never learned any social graces--like, say, "don't eat other people"--but who learned well how to survive by any means necessary.

This structure probably made tons of sense to Wells during the days when laborers were forced underground to work in coal mines and other similar environments. So one might suppose that his vision died once the profession of coal mining became little more than a novelty for many people (despite our ever increasing consumption of fossil fuels). However, thanks to the pedway and to the gobs of tourists who see no problem at all with stopping in the middle of a public thoroughfare to consult their map, Wells' vision lives on.

Watch out! Five hundred years from now, my offspring will be noshing on yours