Only in Los Angeles

I woke to bad news this morning. The radio, turned on for some get up and going alternative rock, instead reported the latest in tragic calamity. I hate it when that happens. I said before, I'm not a news hound, if it's important it finds me. I guess this was important, but I could have waited until later in the day.

It's not always easy, being the guy who can make a smart remark in the face of death and destruction, but I do my best. As I stood in line at the gas station, caught by the slow process of the highly trained staff changing shifts, shaking off the grimness seemed a necessity. The woman in front of me in line went from placid to impatient to seething. Finally I said "it could be worse, we could have been on the metro-link." Obviously, she had heard about the train wreck, because she immediately lightened up about the wait. My mind finally in gear I kept going until she actually laughed.

Her sense of humor is obviously as twisted as mine. What made her laugh? My observation that in Chicago they run about a zillion commuter trains safely every day, but give Los Angeles a dozen trains they run them into each other. I'll have to be careful about saying that. One of the trains may well have had passengers from my far flung LA bedroom community. Someone who had a loved one on the train might not be as easily amused, and with my luck he'll be like six-six two-seventy.