You’re in the Quiet Car

So? Button Your Lip. Close Your Pie Hole. Stop Flapping Your Gums.

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

A woman was thrown off an Amtrak train a while back for gabbling loudly on her phone for 16 hours straight — while riding in the quiet car. I learned about it when my pal Deb posted the story of the woman’s removal from the train on her Facebook page with the comment. “Sometimes Dreams Can Come True.”

Deb and I both work in a public library, where quiet, thankfully, is the norm. In a library, the sounds of everyday life are expected to be muffled. I appreciate a workplace where I can shush folks who talk too loudly and tell anyone who begins blathering on their cell to vamoose.

Asking parents whose kids are hollering to escort the little terrors from the building works for me. There’s a reason the expression is “peace and quiet” and not “peace and cacophony.”

When I leave work, it can be hard to adjust. I’m old enough to remember a world where folks didn’t chat through movies or talk on the phone about private matters in public places.

Waiting inside the train station last winter, I struggled to concentrate on my book as a man in a suit negotiated a contract at top volume, barking orders and resolving issues while pacing back and forth. Then a woman pulled out her cell and began an urgent…