Metro Section

The joys of public transportation! This week I've been subjected to:

1. Man sleeping on bench outside the Metro station...with his hand down his pants. Good Monday Morning! Seriously, how do you sleep in until 6:40 on a public bench anyway?

2. A little girl who looked to be 8 years old (with her mother) wearing a bright blue wig and a laminated sign around her neck that said, in part, "Lil' Kim Fan!". Lil' Kim just got out of prison and has a song called "Can't F**k With Queen Bee". When I was 8, I liked the Beach Boys and Huey Lewis and the News.

3. I got on the train home today and the car I was on was stiflingly (is that a word? If so, did I spell it right?) hot. So I waited until the next stop and got onto the adjacent car, which was really crowded (because of the exodus from the other car). So now I'm all sweaty AND standing for 3 more stops until I change trains. No big deal, but I'm not in the best mood. Oh, and the train stations are really hot this time of year, because they can't air condition enough to make up for the 102 F heat. I read an article earlier this week that the target temperature in the DC Metro stations this time of year is 85. Lovely! So, I change trains and manage to find a seat...ah, now I get to curl up with my Barron's French Book/MP3s and learn to say "I have a room on the 4th floor!" ("J'ai un chambre sur le quatrieme etage." Why is this one of the first phrases my book teaches? Do they expect that my priorities are such that I have a more urgent need to invite people up to my room than say, ask for the check in a restaurant? Because I still don't know how to say that, and it gets uncomfortable when you and the waiter just sit there waiting for the other to do something). But right after I sit down in an aisle seat and before I retreat into my happy place, the woman in the inside seat looks over her shoulder and says "oh, that little boy". I look where she's looking and see a perfectly healthy looking 6(ish)-year old tourist. She then (almost insistently) offers the boy's mother her seat so the boy can sit...which means she's basically volunteering my aisle seat to them too. The boy doesn't look like he's been wearing heels and listening to my pointy-haired boss all day, so I'm not feeling too charitable. Besides, most small children seem to adore standing on the Metro and swinging around the poles like little pole dancers. Maybe the mother saw my sad face, because she declined the offer. Then, super-generous-seatmate tries to engage me in a conversation about the goofy-looking dude on the cover of the Style section of her paper. I try to be good natured, saying something like "Yeah, he's not very stylish is he? Yeah, that tie really sucks." (please, please stop talking to me)

But you know what? It still beats an hour and a half on the Beltway!