A Metrolink moment.

Generally I see taking public transportation as a life-affirming experience: I mean, here are all these people with all these different backgrounds and heritages, thrown together on a train going to the big city. The 50-minute Metrolink commute into LA is long enough that you can, if so motivated, get to know the person across from you pretty well by the end of the ride. And hey-everyone's saving the environment! Yay for humanity!
The other day, though, I had to sit next to what could euphemistically be called a racially charged dispute between a Latino graphic designer and a black guy with half of Fort Knox in his mouth, spurred by the former accidentally putting his bag down on the latter's foot. I had to drown out the onslaught of epithets with my iPod so that my PC reflex, so carefully calibrated in Amherst and Claremont, wouldn't compel me to gasp out loud or start lecturing.
Moments after the affair had been settled, we were joined by a pair of cherubic-looking 8-year-old schoolkids, one of which piped up, "My dad has a gun but the police said that if they find it one more time he'll go to jail so he's hiding it in my closet."
Oh dear God. Humanity has a ways to go yet.