Let me confess that I sleep with scores of strangers daily. We share the same bedroom, courtesy of Metra, the way to really sleep.
Yet Metra trains roll into and out of the Loop every day bearing thousands of serious misunderstandings over our desire or need for sleep. The reason is that my group, though probably larger, is at odds with another group, the talkers.
I long had harbored toxic anger and gladly would have spilled things on the talkers if I weren’t more polite. But after years of studying the us and them of Metra’s rolling soap operas, I finally figured out the real difference between the sleepers and the talkers: distance.
The talkers usually are the close-in crowd who ride only half an hour or even less. The sleepers typically ride to the end of the line or close to it, almost an hour and a half.
One group wants to hop from Point A to Point E, still jazzed from work and feeling chatty. Members of the other group want to journey from Point A to Point J, sometimes desperate for a nap because they live so far away and must start early in the morning.
Thus, essentially I have people in my Metra bedroom who are keeping me awake. Yet, to them, I’m some crab who shouldn’t sleep in public anyway.
But I’ve got to think that being deprived of sleep makes a person a lot angrier than being deprived of the right to make noise.
One of my fellow sleepers who rides to the end of the line in Fox Lake is Ruth Cortilet, a veteran Metra observer who has been commuting by train more than 40 years.
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She believes the division between the two groups grew from a crack to a gorge with the advent of the cellphone. Previously it took two blabbermouths to be inconsiderate by having a loud conversation. Now it takes only one loud creep to wreck the peace for an entire compartment. And let me say, some phone users are very quiet and considerate.
But . . .
“I’m very serious when I say that Metra should consider having cellphone cars like they had smoking cars years ago, so cellphone users can go in those designated cars and everyone else can be peaceful and sleep,” Cortilet said. “People are really mad. . . . It’s just bringing out the worst in people.”
A rogue group of shushers apparently has taken over a compartment on the Milwaukee District North line, declaring it a cell-free zone. One conductor’s description indicated that their zeal exceeds his comfort level.
Yet, at worst, they simply are being the same kind of jerks that loud, incessant phone users are by insisting that things go their way. If I knew these shushers, I’d give them a high-five, because I believe confrontations are the first steps toward solutions.
Metra’s position is fairly understandable. The agency continues to issue appeals for consideration and quiet, but it can’t reach in and change offensive personalities.
“We’ve had requests for cellphone-only cars, but some of our rush-hour trains carry more than 1,000 people,” said spokesman Tom Miller. “That makes Metra reluctant to do anything that would interfere with efficient boarding. We must allow passengers to board along an entire platform.”
Too, adding cellphone police to a conductor’s duties could well be asking too much.
Still, it might be worth a tiny experiment just to see if this could be accomplished without conductor policing, to see if these two groups, once enlightened, could do their best to segregate into the two com-partments of a car on their own.
Just let me dream, even if I can’t always do it on Metra.
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