NOT SO ADORABLE LOSERS. On days that the Chicago Cubs are playing under the sun at Wrigley Field (as God and Ernie Banks intended) the Metra commuter trains that leave the suburbs in the 10 am hour offer some interesting people-watching. Case in point: last Wednesday's Train 44 on the Union Pacific West Line, off Geneva at 10.05 am. The Cubs were to play the last day game of the 2004 season that day, and the train had a large contingent of spectators. (The off-peak commuter trains are often quite full owing to the horrible congestion and high parking charges in the city, and this one was no exception.)

Among the spectators were more than a few high-schoolers, probably playing hookey, and some middle-school and elementary-age kids ACCOMPANIED BY THEIR PARENTS. It's campaign season, and the Opposition is raising the spectre of Two Americas (the old have and don't have again.) But I have to wonder how much of that Second America has lost ground on purpose ... say, by skipping school for A LOSING CUBS GAME ... with Mom or Dad complicit in the skipping. Average people cut corners, and corner-cutting can be a learned behavior.

It's a good bet that the high achievers Joanne Jacobs discovered ("They work harder." D'oh!) neither skip school for a day baseball game nor have the connivance of their parents in the skipping.