This morning I listed some of the significant maps in my life, and there’s another one that stands out in my memory: the London Tube Map! The Tube Map has been periodically updated, and stylistic flourishes added, but the basic design of this subway-diagram was created in 1933, by a smart fellow who realized that geographical accuracy was less important than giving people a user-friendly schematic of the different lines and stations. So his map is just that: a schematic diagram, rather than a strictly geographical one.

It’s a brilliant design, actually, much easier to use as a reference, when you’re trying to figure out your stops, and your transfers to other lines, than an actual map of the subways:

the geographical subway map

On our European sojourn in 1984, when I was nine years old, my parents bought a postcard of the Tube Map, for navigational purposes—and they put me in charge of it. I’d never felt so grownup in my life as I did that week, using my bossiest voice to tell the grownups what trains we needed, and which stop we needed to get off to switch lines. I have to imagine they were “checking my work,” in a manner of speaking—but they were subtle about it. They let me have the glory, and I felt Important all week. (I’m sure I was insufferable.)

What stood out most, in our experience of the subways, was the ubiquitous presence of punk-rockers, wearing leathers and tattoos and dangling earrings, and sporting brilliantly dyed mohawks and spiked hairdos. They must have looked a little scary, too, because our parents gave us firm instructions: don’t stare openly… unless there’s a train-track between them and us! We also devised a code-word, so we could alert each other to the fascinating sight without drawing attention to our attention-drawing. We called them “pirates.” Because they were colored as brilliantly as parrots, and parrots sit on pirates’ shoulders.

We saw many things, in London, of cultural and historical significance—and I remember those too… But nothing stands out in my memory quite as vividly as the subway “pirates.”