and what did you do in the Mooninite Invasion, Daddy?

So the other day I was on my way to work.

We got to the subway station at about ten after eight. A train was waiting and we jumped on just as an announcement was being made that the train would be standing by for two minutes. After the two minutes, the doors shut and the train pulled out of the station. The intercom then came on and said that the train would be stopping at the next station and we would all have to get off there to be shuttled into the city because there was "a police action" at the stop beyond that.

Generally, the sort of police action that causes that sort of detour is someone jumping in front of a train or some sort of gunplay. Anything less interesting than that just slows the train to a halt and we get to wait until it gets cleared up.

We get to the next station and we wait. By my estimate there must have been over a thousand people waiting for a shuttle bus. For crowd control there was one person with a clipboard trying to yell everyone out of the street and back onto the sidewalk. We didn't all fit on the sidewalk.

Because I am one of the few people on the planet who still doesn't carry a cellphone, I was at the far end of the bus terminal where the payphones are. When a bus finally pulled up, the driver saw the huge mass of people and drove past them all to a place that didn't seem quite as scary. Right in front of me. Which is how I got myself jammed onto a shuttle bus.

The thing about the MBTA is that they don't have any shuttle plans for when a station goes down. The bus driver, as is always the case, had no idea where to go. So he went to the next stop on the route. The one that the police had shut down. We pull up and the place is nuts. There were fire trucks, police cars, ambulances, and the bomb squad.

This is where the station is.

You will notice from the map that the station is under the highway. This is a point where the subway, two commuter rail lines, an interstate, and a couple of smaller state highways all come together to go into the city. If you are so inclined, it's a pretty smart place to blow up if you want to get attention at rush hour.

So the bus driver tries to pull us up to the door. Past the cops who are waving at us. Finally he says "I guess I better go someplace else. Where should we go?" We all yell that we want to go into the city. "How do we get there?" He asks.

Folks who follow the news will know that this was the beginning of what Wikipedia seems to finally be deciding to call the 2007 Boston Mooninite Scare.

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Some things I've not seen mentioned.

The day before, a bomb threat note was found at MIT. It was later found to be harmless, but it most likely got the authorities to be a little more antsy than normal at the sight of a goofy electronic device with a bunch of lightbulbs on it.

From the Boston Police log:

• Six minutes later at 1:02 p.m. Boston Police received a call from New England Medical Center Security that they had uncovered a pipe bomb in their building in a desk drawer. Shortly thereafter Hospital Security reported that a suspect had been seen leaving the area of the pipe bomb in an agitated state stating, "God is warning you that today is going to be a sad Day." The suspect was reported to have fled the hospital. Boston Police continue to investigate this incident. No further details at this time.
• At 1:08 p.m. the Boston Police Bomb Squad arrived and confirmed the existence of an item which appeared to be a pipe bomb inside the hospital.

This was simultaneous to the second wave of Mooninite devices being discovered - also on bridges going out of the city. New England Medical is on the same subway line as the station where the first device was found.

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A digression: Two stories about me as a youth frightening people.

One of my joys as a young lad was Hallowe'en when I had the opportunity to work for a charity haunted house. As I got to be High School age, I was allowed to dress up in the monster costumes and jump out at people. Once I reached this goal, I discovered why they don't let the young kids do it. Sometimes when people are frightened, the first reaction is to punch you in the face. Good times.

Also as a youth I spent a fair amount of time in a shopping mall hanging with various friends. One day we were approached by a couple of folks who wanted to bring us to their church. We responded in a manner that we felt was perfectly calibrated to convince them to leave us alone. It could be best summarized as "Oh Ho! We're Satanists! Bwah Hah Hah! Booga Booga!" From that day on, that particular mall was filled with evangelicals as it was known to be crawling with Satanists. We were never left alone there again.

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Oh what the hell. One more:

One day a friend and I were walking down a sidewalk when a friend of my friend was driving up the street in the opposite direction. The friend of a friend saw us and decided that it would be fun to scare us a bit. His plan was to drive across the oncoming traffic lane and on to the sidewalk at us. He would then swerve back across traffic and back into his lane. As he saw nobody coming in the other direction, he figured that this would be easy. When he cut across the street and onto the sidewalk coming at us, I, not recognizing this guy as he was not my friend, figured that he was drunk or insane or something and ran to get out of the way. At the time the best place to get out of the way of the nutcase who was driving down the sidewalk at us was to run into the street. Where he was planning to swerve away from us. In order to avoid me, now in the street, he had to swerve back at the sidewalk. Where my friend was. He missed us both, squealed to a halt, and then got out of his car to yell at me for being an idiot.

To sum up: I've learned not to go freaking people out. In the long run it isn't worth it.

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One more thing, just to chew on.

Let me say that I think that this was an over-reaction. There was poor co-ordination, and the media was a bit hyperbolic and slow on the ball. By far, the lowest marks go to the MBTA who seem to react to every crisis, mechanical breakdown and patch of inclement weather like they have just been pulled out of their mother and slapped on their backside.

But I've been wondering about how this advertising campaign was supposed to have worked. Presuming that there was no panic from these things, the only people who would have understood what they were, were the people who have actually seen the program that they were advertising. So it wasn't so much an attempt to increase the fanbase, but in fact to galvanise it. Thus a fan of the program can stand on the subway platform or wherever and overhear other folks asking each other "what the hell is that?" and feel somehow superior because they know.

This sort of hubris is something that I have frequently identified in myself. Everyone has it. It is part of being human, this sort of one-upmanship. I fight against it constantly. I am not superior to anyone else due merely to the facts and things that I stuff in my head. But people are always looking out for other people who have the same things in their head - religion, politics, sports teams, music groups. And television shows.

Nobody likes to see the sort of people that they identify with in trouble. That's why every time there some horrible crime in some suburb, there's always someone on television going "I never thought it could happen here." I wonder how different the ridicule that is going around would be if all this hoo-ha had been caused two middle aged guys in suits throwing around guerrilla ads for the golf channel.