If you do manage not to get flashed and stabbed in the head or punched in the face for your ipod, just pray you don't have a medical emergency while riding the T.  Not only are medical emergencies embarrassing, but the MBTA's track record on addressing rider heart attacks isn't exactly heartening.

Anyone who has ridden the T with any regularity can picture the scene, I'm sure, with utter clarity.  You've got a passenger slumped over on the floor in obvious distress.  You've got thirty-odd panicked, utterly cowed riders crying for help.  Which, as every rider should know by now, is right where the MBTA wants you.

Next come the T employees who saunter in to "investigate" the situation not by checking the stricken man's pulse or asking his fellow riders what has happened or even poking him with a stick, but by merely glancing in at him, rolling their eyes, clucking their tongues, and using nothing but their years of "experience and the expertise," as spokes-troll Joe Pesaturo said in their defense, determining that the stricken passenger is "merely drunk."

Now, even if the man were drunk he could have been experiencing a medical emergency, and would have been as deserving as anyone to receive more than a cursory dismissal on the basis of nothing more than the "experience and the expertise" of someone clearly not qualified to make a medical judgment.  As one EMT put it: "immediate medical attention should be given to anyone who is in 'an altered level of consciousness or is not fully responsive.'"

Sure, it'll hold up the train a few minutes.  What's your point?  Funny how the T is never too concerned about endemic service delays until a service delay might actually be justified by a rider's medical emergency.  Then, all the sudden, delays must be avoided at all costs.  We're on a schedule here!  You can be sure the only time the trains will run on time is when a passenger is in need of assistance that can only be given if the trains are held up. 

Whether a passenger seems drunk to a T employee who might be himself  doesn't justify his situation being treated any less seriously than anyone in physical distress on the T.  Even if it turns out he's "merely drunk", hold the train for ten minutes, we'll wait.  Really, we're used to it.  You can even call it a "schedule adjustment" if that makes you feel better.