Because of my new job (in downtown Salt Lake City), and because of the location of our new apartment (in Historic Sandy, near the 9000 S. TRAX station), I ride the TRAX train to and from work everyday.
Christina was kind enough not to balk when I bought a CD player with an MP3 decoder and an AM/FM tuner, and I usually spend my transit time listening to music, and reading. In the morning, I read the newspaper, and in the evening I read a book (currently: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
Yesterday, however, I was sleeping on the way home from work. Not a deep sleep, but that “I’m on the train and I’m drifting, and I might miss my stop if I’m not careful” kind of sleep.
As the train approached Murray, however, I was rudely awakened by the sound of somebody speaking very loudly. I wasn’t able to hear what the person was saying (because I had music playing through my headphones), but my first instinct was, “We’re getting robbed.”
That must be a carry over from my days living in Sao Paulo.
I opened my eyes, and pulled off my headphones, and I saw two high school-aged boys standing at the front of the train. The first was wearing a cheer/yell leading uniform for the Spartans (I’m assuming they were Murray High students), and was carrying a 1980s-style video camera, with which he was recording himself talking to us on the train. He started to lead a cheer (”Give me a ‘B’” [”b”] “Give me an ‘E’” [”e”] “Give me an ‘N’” [”n”]) — at which point I began to be seriously embarrassed for the two of them. Our yell leader proceeded to turn the time over to “Ben,” the spokesperson of the two.
Ben then stood up and started to give an impromptu speech. He started by telling us that he was not a John Kerry fan, but that he definitely wasn’t a Bush fan.
He spent the next five minutes making vague accusations about George W. Bush (with no substantial reasoning or evidence behind his claims). For a while he ranted about the economy, “I’ve been fortunate enough to keep my job over the last couple of years, but my brother has lost his job, and my sister has lost her job, and I just don’t think the economy is where Bush would like it to be. He had 5 or 4 or 3 or whatever days at the Republican National Convention to talk about the economy, and he didn’t. So you shouldn’t vote for him.”
Later, he ranted about the “1000-plus wasted” (his word, not mine) lives in Iraq. In his words, “Then there is that whole weapons-of-mass-destruction thing. What’s up with that? Bush just had a personal vendetta against Saddam Hussein, and decided to throw our soldiers lives away for his personal little war.”
He kind of rambled back and forth without a real structure, purpose, or conclusion to his speech, and then thanked us for listening. “Now, I’m not telling you to vote for John Kerry, because I don’t really like him too much, but I’m telling you definitely not to vote for George W. Bush, because Bush isn’t right.”
Now Wendy, my sister, teaches Government and Law at Murray High School. I could see her assigning her students to do something like this. So I caledl her on my cell phone to see if she was involved (however slightly) in this debacle. She didn’t answer.
The guy in front of me started talking to these two as they waited for the train to stop. He asked them if they were doing this for a school project. They said “Well, I guess you could call it that. Well, really, we’re just out here to educate the public about why not to vote for Bush.”
Somebody else asked them, “So you aren’t doing this for a class?”
“No, not really.” The train arrived at the next stop, and they thanked us all for listening again, and Impromptu Speaker and Video Camera Cheerleader got off the train.
The guy in front of me said, “If they had been doing it for a class, I was going to offer feedback, because the sure didn’t give a very persuasive argument.”
You can say that again. I grabbed my headphones and went back to sleep.
Posted September 24th, 2004 by Paul.
