The Toddler on the Subway Said "I Sit Here"

Eleven to fourteen minutes is how long the commute takes if nobody in the household is two. I have done the same school run as the map and as myself, and the difference is a juice box.

The best report of what thirty minutes looks like comes from a Park Slope Parents thread, from a family that had commuted to lower Manhattan with one child and then two for four and a half years. They had a reason: subsidized day care through a parent's job, and about forty-five more minutes at work every day. They used a carrier for as long as possible, then taught the children to walk holding a hand, skipping the stroller entirely for the second. Their advice: lots of snacks, toys and books, and a thick skin for side glances from strangers.

Then the toddler. If not given a seat, the parent wrote, he would stand in front of "some unfortunate soul" and say things like "I sit here" and "too many people on the train." The parent's assessment: "Thank god he is cute."

"I sit here." That is not a request. That is a toddler issuing a ruling.

Another parent in the same thread, who had commuted a stroller to Union Square for five years, said the stairs were manageable, and that if you look pathetic enough, people offer to help. Sometimes you let a train go because it's too full to squeeze your child onto. And, said the first family, "Daycares charge $1/minute for being late."

A dollar a minute. The map estimate of eleven minutes, on a bad morning, is a thirty-dollar commute.

On the Upper East Side, a different parent wondered whether bigger-name preschools farther away were worth it over good ones within walking distance. A respondent said their child's "top tier" kindergarten had turned out, honestly, to be just okay: a long bus ride and no close friends, where his old school had given him real ones.

The first parent decided to keep the nanny and look closer to home.

The youngest is seven now and has never once been given a seat she did not ask for. On the subway last month she stood in front of a man reading a newspaper and said nothing at all, for a long time, until he folded it and stood up. I didn't teach her that. I was the man with the newspaper, a week earlier, in our kitchen.