CHICAGO, IL—Ever since Eric Adler started working for the Chicago Transit Authority, he's had only one goal in mind: not losing his balance in front of a car full of strangers.
Although the promise of advancements and pay increases was tantalizing, Adler's single greatest fear has been and always will be that he is walking through a train car, or standing as he speaks to a passenger, and a subtle shift in the direction of the train will cause him to lose his center of balance, opening the opportunity for gravity to fulfill its destiny of pulling him to the floor, flailing about like a fish on a hook and shrieking like a helpless child, embarrassing himself and every passenger who was unfortunate enough to witness the debacle.
"Hang in there, Eric," he says to himself each second he spends on a train, as many as 6 hours in a day. "Just 24 years until you can retire. Then we'll just stay on solid ground until we croak."
Although Adler suffers from no vestibular disorder that would cause him to be more prone to balance issues, the idea of tumbling to the ground right in front of a crowd is horrifying. "I'm the conductor. I mean, these [passengers] look to me for strength and reassurance during the arduous ordeal that is train transportation. We are reaching speeds upwards of 70 mph, at the same time the earth is rotating several hundred miles per hour at our longitude. Any motion that we make is against all of this movement, and so it's a dangerous game we're playing. It's only natural to get nervous. I need to be the one setting an example by planting my feet firmly, and not wavering. If they see me fall, the whole system could collapse. It'd be total anarchy."
With so much riding on his conscience at every waking moment of work, Adler has taken to some extreme measures to resist losing his balance. He's considered constructing a tether system throughout the cars, but his supervisors quickly shot down that idea as it would create new hazards. He considered for a time hanging from a harness in a zip line that could glide down the length of a car, but he could not find a way to keep from swinging about like a pair of sneakers hanging over a telephone wire on a windy day.
At present, Adler has devised a system of ticket punching that uses only one hand, leaving the other free to grasp firmly some stationary object to brace himself against the slightest change in directional volition. He also wears shoes with wide soles to help him to maintain balance, and has lost as much upper-body weight as possible, while keeping as much as $250 in coins in multiple pockets in his pants to keep his center of gravity low.
"Laugh if you must," he says, climbing aboard his tricycle to get back home after a day of commutes, "but I haven't fallen yet."
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