Baseball and education don't mix
I have a new class, this one in marketing research. (NOT "market research," though I haven't had a chance to find out what the difference is. Funny thing when you never do the assigned reading -- you try not to ask any genuinely relevant questions.) Today I tried to get to class on time but there was a Cubs game and getting to the Addison L stop was like swimming upstream to mate. The crowds were impenetrable -- "penetrable," heh-heh -- vendors and bums and tour buses were everywhere, and some stadium official actually yelled at me for heading toward the exit not the entrance. I had to stop and explain that I was heading for neither, and unbelievable though it might be, Wrigley Stadium was just on my way to the L.
Finally I get to the platform and not a soul is there except for one drunk guy who's screaming into the world's most annoying cell phone about how he came all the way to Wrigleyville to get tickets and they wouldn't give them to him because he paid for them with two different credit cards and . . . anyway, I heard the story six or seven times and that's all you really need to know.
Cell Phone Dude sits right next to me, even though the train has vomited its contents at the Wrigley Field stop and there are plenty of other seats. The phone was annoying because its ring was a snippet of some especially humorous phone message he had downloaded or recorded or something.
Meanwhile, I'm feeling like the world's biggest nerd because I'm huddled in a corner of a train seat eating a Lean Pocket with about 20 paper towels, drinking water, and reading "Great Expectations," all while clutching a grubby tote bag whose front promotes a 2002 phonology conference. And all while heading toward a marketing research class.
Luckily, within 5 minutes I realized I'd gotten on the wrong train -- something that is normally impossible, but on certain select game days the Purple Line stops at Addison. So Cell Phone Guy and I were both happy. And I wasn't even late to class. Sometimes I amaze myself.
