Dead or Alive on the Transit System

When I got on the train at O'Hare to ride into Chicago, this young guy was pacing back and forth between a couple of cars.  He made me a little nervous at first. When the train pulled out of the station at the airport, he settled into a vacant seat and proceeded to lay down, make himself comfortable and start to snore.  I realized that he was not looking for fat tourist to rob, he was looking for a quiet place where he could take a nap.

Now people sleep on the DC metro, usually not laying down, but it does happen, and no one bothers them.  In fact you can die on a metro train and no one might notice.  A couple of years ago someone died on their morning commute into DC one morning, after rush hour the train went out of service and no one said a thing. The train sat on a siding until the evening rush hour, when the afternoon rush hour riders boarded - they complained about the dead guy on the train. Shortly after that Metro issued a new policy that when a train goes out of service the operator has to walk through all of the cars to check for bodies.  Reassuring.

In Chicago, about the third stop out of the airport, a CTA employee came in the door shouts and shakes this guy awake.  Towering behind the CTA guy are two police officers in full body armor, they weren't taking any chances.  The sleeper assures them that he is okay, he just needs a nap, and they leave and he goes back to snoring.  I hope he got a nice nap.