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diaryland: sirilyan.diaryland.com: entry for 2005-05-06 (22:32)
In which our plucky young hero stands up for the forces of not stealing things.

I knew the broken windows theory was sound criminology, but I never knew it was the best free entertainment in the city. Herewith, an edited version of how I described it to LG:

(22:21:04) Sirilyan: Okay. :-) It begins when Merf Herder and I are heading home from North York. Around coming toward Lawrence station, these punkass kids near us start tearing down one of the maps from the top of the car and rolling it up to take home. Merf's visibly angered by this and goes over to confront them, and I join her and tell the kid with the map that I'm going to watch him put it back up. 'cause, you know, I really don't like vandalism.

(22:21:53) Sirilyan: Since he's giving back lip, I press the yellow strip and the train halts while a security guy is summoned, who tells us there'll be someone at Eglinton who can help us. (The four kids, meanwhile, have decided that Merf and I are just the biggest Star Wars fans ever. This will become important.)

(22:23:09) Sirilyan: At Eglinton, we talk with a TTC supervisor who says that there can be some security people along to handle this, but it's a Friday night and they're stretched thin and it could take a while. Merf's kind of shaky because the whole punkass-kid-gives-lip thing is an unpleasant flashback to middle school for her, so we decide to let it go. (Luckily for these kids. I had a few books to read, a Game Boy Advance, and plenty of time and money on my hands. What, it could take two, three hours for the right person to arrive? Man, that really sucks. Good thing I'm not a middle school kid who has to be home before midnight.)

(22:24:07) Sirilyan: So those kids hop on the next train, and we take the next one, and we think it is the end of the story. Ha. These kids are waiting for us at Yonge station, and when they see us they board the train and begin doing their best to get under our Star-Wars-loving skins by performing reenactments of key scenes, complete with wigger ninja moves that I'm sure are in the Special Edition.

(22:26:18) Sirilyan: All I can think is Hope you like the airport, kids. Remember, I'm the guy with time and money plenty: if they're willing to follow us to Downsview, and then onto the airport bus, and then to the airport, what, like I had better plans tonight? The initial anger has by now turned into serious, weapons-grade amusement, particularly because Merf and I spend the time discussing concerts we plan to attend in the next month. Being ignored is like poison to them; they try harder and harder with each passing moment to spit it up, using all their wit and cleverness to mock our conversation. It's kind of like watching an episde of Mystery Paint-Drinking Retard Theater 3000.

(22:27:19) Sirilyan: The one of them who is smart says "No, let's get off here" several times as the train keeps taking them further and further from where they need to be, but the others overrule him and keep on following us. Finally, at King, they get off and switch trains, banging on the windows of the subway car to make sure we know they're gone. We continue on to St. George (I'm a transit nerd, I like the subway) and go eastbound from there. And meet them again at Yonge.

(22:28:44) Sirilyan: Now they are seriously discombobulated by this. How the hell did we manage this trick? Are we following them? We have to be following them, that's got to be it, we used our spaceship to get there faster. So we just stay on the train, trying to figure out how far they're going to go to make sure they get the last word. (Hope you enjoy Scarborough Town Centre, kids.) Sadly, they get off at their destination stop at Woodbine, though not before throwing a penny at me (because our Star-Warsy asses were, of course, so poor that we had no choice but to live on the subway). Then, as the thief who started it all gets off, he tugs at my hair and spits an ineffectual little drip (like father, like son) on us.

(22:29:24) Sirilyan: I could, at that point, have done the whole yellow-emergency-stripe thing again, because by now we have a rather solid case for harassment, complete with witnesses in the form of everyone else on the train, all of whom know only that these little shits have been making their lives miserable for ten subway stops.

(22:30:06) Sirilyan: But I didn't, because really, this had been the most amusing thing ever. The amusingest part, of course, being that we took a full hour out of these kids' lives, took them fifteen stops out of their way, and were laughing ourselves sick the whole time.

(22:31:32) Sirilyan: It's almost a shame the older and smarter one was there to make them realize they were being jerked around, because without him, right now we'd be watching the transformation of a 10-year-old's boy's face as we hopped in an airport limo and said "There's no fucking way we're going to let it take two and a half hours to get back to the city from here on public transit. Bloor and Yonge, please."

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