I'm a cranky commuter, but a happy walker

This morning I walked to the Luna Grill and Diner to meet a friend for brunch. My walk took me along a route frequented by many cyclists, and when I was halfway there, I heard a bicycle bell ring loudly, close behind me. I was already pretty far to the right, but I moved over a bit more. The ringing was so insistent that I started to wonder if it was someone I knew. I looked over my shoulder and saw two men in windbreakers and bike helmets, neither of whom I'd ever seen before.

"On your left," the first man called out, ringing his bell again. He glanced back as he passed me and then braked quickly. "Why, you're pregnant with expectation!" he exclaimed, as his companion coasted slowly past both of us.

"Yes, I am," I grinned back, as I approached him.

"You know what's the busiest day of the year in the maternity ward?" he asked. I stopped and asked him which day that would be. "Labor Day!"

He laughed at his own joke, informed me that he worked for Planned Parenthood, and pedaled away.

Now I can worry about people googling to find out how to get tickets and emailing me for information

Since I started my current job a couple of years ago, I have on occasion received phone calls from people who want to buy Georgetown basketball tickets. When I get these phone calls, I explain that they've called the wrong number and give them the correct one. That number doesn't resemble my extension in the slightest, nor do any of the other athletic department numbers, so I began asking people where they got my number, thinking that perhaps the university had run an advertisement with the wrong number in it. Every single person I've asked has told me they got my number from 411. The university seems to think there is nothing they can do to help me with the problem.

It's been an ongoing issue, but one that hasn't bothered me particularly. Until a couple of weeks ago when I came in on a Monday morning to 14 messages on my voice mail requesting basketball tickets. I returned calls from people who had left messages that I could understand to give them the correct number.

I am amazed at how rude people are. I don't have to return calls when someone dials the wrong number, but I do it to be helpful (and because I'm afraid they'll call again). I explain who I am and why I'm calling and give them the correct number. Then they hang up on me. Either that or they just don't get it and can't figure out why I'm calling them back if I can't sell them basketball tickets.

The calls continue to come, and the callers always ask me "Is this Georgetown?" When I confirm that they've reached someone at Georgetown, they ask about basketball tickets. I give them the correct number, and then many of them hang up on me immediately without thanks. If I do catch them in time to ask where they got my number in the first place, they sound impatient as they tell me that they got it from Information. I'm not sure if they're bothered that Information gave them the wrong number, if they're annoyed that they have to take the time to answer my question, or if they think I ought to know where they got my number.

Others just seem amazingly dense. If they get my voice mail, which now explains that if they are trying to get basketball tickets they need to dial this other number, they leave a message anyhow. And if they reach me (or if I'm a sucker and call them back), they don't understand why I can't sell them basketball tickets. After all, I am at Georgetown, right? There must be something too complicated about dialing this other number I am trying to give them and something too complex about the idea that there are academic offices at a university that have absolutely nothing to do with the athletic teams. "I'm sorry, but I can't help you with getting tickets. You need to call this other number," I explain.

"But aren't you at Georgetown?"

"Yes, but I'm at a research institute. I have nothing to do with the athletic department."

"Well, who do I need to talk to?" I give them the number again.

I just had a new experience, which was more on the rude side of things than the dense side. I gave the correct number to someone who called. She hung up on me, and I guess called the correct number. I'm thinking she was told she had to mail something in, because she called me back a few minutes later. "Is this Georgetown?" she asked again. I confirmed that it was and started to explain again, but she interrupted me: "What's your zip code?" I gave it to her and she hung up on me again.

It would be wrong of me to try to sell tickets to the next caller, wouldn't it? I imagine taking their credit card info, telling them where their seats are, and giving them an imaginary confirmation number to take to the will-call office. I would only do it to the people who keep insisting that I help them after I give them the right number. I wish I could think of a way to do it to the people who hang up without saying thank you.

Don't tell the Blue Jays

Overheard on my bus home yesterday:

Man #1: Y'hear about that guy that shot up that school in Canada?

Man #2: Man, that wasn't in Canada. That was Montreal.

Man #1: Montreal is in Canada.

Man #2: No, it ain't, man. The Nats was the Montreal Expos 'fore they came here. They don't got baseball in Canada.

How to entertain yourself on Metro when you've finished the Sudoku

I stepped onto the nearly-empty last car of the train, sat down in one of the first seats, and immediately regretted my choice: the young man behind me was talking on a cell phone. But even though he was talking in a loud cell phone voice, he did at least seem to be wrapping up his conversation.

“Excuse me,” I heard a woman behind me and across the aisle say after he hung up. “You aren’t from this area, are you?”

“No,” he told her. It was a safe question on her part: from the conversation he was having, it had been clear he was in town to visit friends.

“Well, they recently passed a law about using cell phones on the Metro. It’s actually a $25 ticket.”

“Oh, I didn’t know.” He sounded very apologetic.

“A lot of people who aren’t from here don’t. It just passed and they don’t have signs up on all the trains.”

I bit my lip and tried not to laugh, as the young man apologized and the woman assured him that it was all right, that she was just trying to help him out. I wanted to turn around and look at them. Because of where I was seated I couldn’t even glimpse their reflections in the windows, but the man across the aisle from me was also suppressing laughter.

Last year for Christmas Brian gave me a book of lies to tell children. I’m thinking there ought to be one of fun lies to tell tourists.

Because "WTF?" didn't qualify as kind or helpful

Last night I stepped onto the right-hand side of the escalator down to the platform at the Foggy Bottom Metro station. I heard some grumbling behind me and turned to see commuters making their way around a family of tourists who were standing (single file, at least) on the left.

"Number one rule for riding Metro is to stand on the right on the escalator so people can pass on the left," I told the tourist mom in what I hoped was a kind and helpful voice, "especially at rush hour."

"Oh, but we need to get the train on the left side," she replied.

At the Foggy Bottom station there is ONE escalator going down to the ONE platform where trains in BOTH directions arrive. I tried to find a way that her reasoning made sense, and opened my mouth to say something else, but then I walked away to wait for a train that would be arriving on the left side of the platform.

Water-logged brain

Before I turned on the computer yesterday, I knew it had rained a lot--enough that one of the air conditioning units in my apartment was leaking wander and that a wet spot was growing on my wall because the condo association doesn't do a good job cleaning out rain gutters--but I didn't expect to see that they had measured seven inches of rain in 24 hours over at National airport. I didn't expect the news that several Metro stations in the District were closed due to flooding. Those stations were beyond where I exit the station, so even though I knew it would likely slow my commute I didn't worry too much.

When will I learn? It took me more than two hours to get to work yesterday morning. I wasn't alone. A lot of people in the DC area reported two- to three-hour commutes. But it was still annoying. I rarely drive to work. It's a 20 minute drive with no traffic, but 40 minutes or more during rush hour, so normally I'm happy to accept a 45-minute trek on public transit. At least then I can get some reading in.

When I reached the Pentagon station, I asked the station manager about buses to Foggy Bottom or Georgetown. He told me what to take, but also point out that the roads were pretty packed too. I'd see that on my bus ride to the Pentagon, and decided to take my luck with the trains.

Much like when a stuck train had caused delays on my evening commute a couple of weeks ago, I made a couple of new friends in the station. We peered down from the upper platform, watching people try to crowd onto the yellow line train that was headed into the District, shook our heads at the people who yelled angrily when they realized they weren't going to make it onto the first Largo train that arrived on our platform; wondered aloud at the people who arrived at the station and seemed surprised to see it so crowded, unable to figure out how they had missed the morning news.

Not everyone became friendly, commiserating with fellow transit riders. There were the angry yellers and people who called colleagues on their cell phones to gripe about being late.

Over an hour after arriving at the station, a blue line train arrived that I thought I'd be able to board. The platform had cleared a bit, and the train wasn't so crowded that arriving passengers couldn't clear off. As I slipped through the doors, a woman with a carry-on sized rolling bag and a brief case pushed towards the doors and stopped.

"I'm getting off at the next station," she explained to people who pushed by her, trying to fill in toward the center of the car so that others could board.

"The doors open on the other side of the train at the next one," I told her, trying to be helpful to her and others. There was room near the other doors and if she moved there, there would be more room for people to board.

"No, they open on the left."

"At the cemetery? No, they open on the right there."

"They open on the left when the trains are traveling in this direction," she said. "It does't just change sides. I think I know that by now."

Baffled, I shrugged and gave up. "Sorry. Didn't realize this was your normal train."

"Oh, it's not. But I'm here a couple of times a year on business."

The train pulled out of the station, and a few minutes later we arrived at Arlington Cemetery. The doors opened on the right. A few people nearby responded to the woman's "excuse mes," as she attempted to make her way across to the opposite doors and out of the car, but no one stepped out of the train to help make way. There wasn't anyone at the station waiting to board, and the doors closed before she could escape.

As the train began to move forward again she turned back to find a pole to hold onto. I noticed that she avoided making eye contact with me.

One of these things is not like the others

I noticed her as soon as I got on the bus: a thin woman, with long, wild, ratted brown hair. She was wearing big sunglasses and a fur coat that looked old, and had a battered, hardside briefcase on the seat beside her. As I passed by and sat down in the seat behind her, I realized that she was muttering to herself, the same phrase, over and over and over.

"Prostitution, Social Security, and incest," she said. "Prostitution, Social Security, and incest."

March miscellany

A few unconnected items:

It did not actually snow yesterday. I treated myself to a peppermint hot chocolate anyhow. And although it was cold, I was not horribly uncomfortable waiting for a bus after work last night, in spite of the fact that I forgot to wear a hat, a scarf, or gloves. (Look, I got out of the house with a coat, my lunch, my house keys, and my Metro card. I think that's pretty good.) It didn’t even begin to rain until I was curled up in bed with my book.


The Husband and I decided to try Indique after getting recommendations from several friends. Now I only regret that we waited so long to try it. Our curries were wonderfully spicy—the chickpeas in the aloo chole cooked to creamy perfection, the eggplant in the baingan bhartha rich and smoky. And the restaurant’s variation on samosas was almost too good to be true. Also? Spell check thinks I’m doing a crappy job on this paragraph.


Ohio State Senator Robert Hagan rocks my socks.


I finally finished Parting the Waters. It was a wonderful book, but after reading exciting chapters on the Freedom Rides, the movements in Albany and Birmingham, and the March on Washington, the last few pages of tying up loose ends was sort of a let down. I suppose it’s the nature of that sort of book, though. I’m taking a break to read some fiction, and then I’ll move on to Pillar of Fire. I figure that by the time I’m done with that At Canaan’s Edge will be out in soft cover.


I am listening to Gillian Welch right now, and quite enjoying her. When Joan Baez included to Gillian Welch songs on Dark Chords on a Big Guitar I thought I should probably get an album. Then El Jefe recommended her to me. Finally I got Hell Among the Yearlings and Time (The Relevator). Both are excellent, although The Husband finds her "too twangy" for his tastes.


I love that the days are getting longer and that the sun is coming up earlier. It makes it so much easier to get up. But I still get funny looks at work for saying things like “I was surprised by how cloudy it turned out to be today. The sky was so clear and red this morning as the sun was coming up.”


I didn’t grow up watching basketball, but I have somehow been liking the college basketball tournament this year. Maybe I just like tournaments: I enjoy the NBA finals, as well. Maybe it's that, in spite of defending the pace of baseball to non-fans, I do enjoy the quicker pace of basketball. Or maybe as a vertically-challenged individual I am just amazed by the size of basketball players. Anyhow, I didn’t fill out a bracket, but I do have teams I’m cheering for. I’m not telling who they are, though. Don’t want to jinx anything.


Speaking of baseball: two weeks until opening day!


I got a call this afternoon from a man from some catering place about bagels for a meeting. He kept asking for Nadia. I kept telling him he had the wrong number. He kept asking if he had the right university. And I would say yes, but I'm not the person you need to talk to. He would ask me to connect him to Nadia. But he didn't know Nadia who or what department she was with. He just needed to talk to someone named Nadia and worked at the university. He told me that he thought she was Muslim. I didn’t find that information very helpful. I asked him what number he was calling. He read me off a number that wasn't mine. I said that wasn't my number, that he must have dialed wrong (but it was way off, so I didn't know how he got to me). Finally he told me that that number was busy, so he had tried my number instead. What the hell? I told him he needed to call back the other number. He asked me how many bagels I needed. I hung up.

I think I’m going to move this site to hereswhathappenedonmywaytoworktoday.blogspot.com, because really, that’s all I ever have stories about.

I got on the bus outside the Spanish embassy this morning. As I swiped my SmarTrip card, I realize that there was a man at the driver’s window and a little black Mercedes parked just in front of the bus with the door open.

“You cut me off. You almost hit me,” the man at the window was saying. “Do you know who I am?”

I moved back into the bus and settled myself at a window on the left side so I could watch what was happening. I could no longer see the driver, but I could keep an eye on the man. The bus driver at first apologized to the man, offering some sort of explanation about not seeing the car and needing to move over.

The man at the bus window, a white man with grey hair and glasses, wearing a dark suit, continued to berate the driver and threatened to call his supervisor. The bus driver lost his apologetic tone, and asked the man to move his car so that he could continue his route. The angry driver repeated his threat.

“Call my supervisor. Here’s the number. Here’s my name.” It’s actually not the first time I’ve seen a bus driver offer this information to someone who was harassing him. The last time it happened, the bus driver then ordered the angry passenger off the bus, on a route where the buses ran only every hour. I had been glad to see the woman gone, as she had been terribly rude to the bus driver—something I think should be a crime, since I depend on these folks to get me around town.

“Don’t think I won’t,” the man said, grabbing a slip of paper away from the driver. “Do you know who you just cut off?”

“An asshole in a fancy car,” the bus driver replied. “You’ve yelled at me, you have the information, now get in your car and get out of my way.”

Without another word, the man went back to his car. I wish I could have figured out who he was, since he clearly thought he ought to be recognized. It would have been awesome to post his name on the internet.

Negotiation

"So you want two bottles of that and a six pack?" I heard a man say, as I walked through Georgetown on my way to the metro after work. He was a tall, heavy-set African American. I couldn't guess how old he was, but I figured he was in his late forties at least. The two girls he was talking to nodded. "And what are you going to give me?"

"Um, twenty dollars?" one of the girls ventured. She was tiny, with straight, shiny brown hair skimming her shoulders and a little more eyeliner than seemed good for her.

"Twenty dollars? Each?" The girl shook her head. I couldn't tell if he was really disgruntled or just giving the girls a hard time. "Man, I'm homeless you know."

"And we're seventeen and don't have jobs, just allowances."

And then I was out of earshot.

To the beat of a different iPod

I noticed him from across the train—noticed the almost-rhythmic nodding of his head, the movement of his shoulders. His back was to me, but I still felt weird about staring. The train was quiet and not very crowded. I could hear the tinny sound of music from the iPod of the young man standing next to me. I kept glancing toward the front of the car, trying to decide if the movements of the man with close-cut grey hair were my imagination. Sometimes he seemed to be dancing, but other times I suspected it was only the swaying of the train.

I spotted him again when I stepped out of the train at Foggy Bottom. He was coming out of the next door down, wearing a wool overcoat open over a charcoal suite and a burgundy tie, with white ear phone cords coming from his coat pocket and a briefcase in his hand. Even though I’d only seen his back on the train, I knew it was him, because he was lip-synching. I bit my lip, trying not to smile. Then, just before we reached the escalator, he began to play his briefcase like an air guitar. I told myself not to stare, but kept right on staring.

He caught me looking. He smiled at me, threw back his head, and played the next few silent chords with even more passion.

Minnesota is so ghetto

For the past two and a half weeks, the bus I take after work from my office to the Metro has been full of teenage ballerinas, here for a summer program with the Washington Ballet. They are very thin, usually wearing shorts and t-shirts over pink tights, with their hair up in buns. For the most part, they are less obnoxious than most groups of teens on the bus.

The dancers come from around the country, and I’ve found their conversations amusing to overhear. I heard one talking about Kansas, and one day a girl who was obviously from New Jersey was teasing a girl from Atlanta about her accent. Last Friday, most were trying to reach their parents by cell phone in an attempt to get permission slips faxed to Washington so that they could attend a Harry Potter midnight release party.

It took willpower to not giggle out loud at the conversation I overheard today. One ballerina sat reading a magazine, and another girl came up and asked her what the article she was reading was about.

“Something about Prairie Home Companion.”

“Prairie Homecoming?”

“No, Prairie Home Companion. The radio show.”

“Oh. On the radio here.”

“No, Minnesota, I think.”

“Oh….Ghetto!”

Sashay on the left

One of the cardinal rules of Metro is that you stand on the right on the escalators. There are no signs to explain the rule to anyone unfamiliar with the system, because Metro is afraid that it will encourage more people to walk, which will lead to more people falling, which will lead to lawsuits. So Brian and I coach all of our out of town visitors on this important rule, in hopes of keeping our guests alive when they travel on the trains, especially at rush hour, when the locals are rushing and cranky. When I am stuck behind someone on an escalator, I sometimes excuse myself and try to pass them. One of my friends has been known to yell “Stand on the right” on the escalator at the Smithsonian station, when it was full of tourists standing on both sides. I don’t have the nerve to do that, but sometimes, like this morning, I do want to tell the person ahead of me to sashay on the left.

Last year, Brian and I went to see A Streetcar Named Desire at the Kennedy Center. As we came out of the Foggy Bottom metro there were three women on the escalator. They were standing in a group talking, and two of them were on the left. We weren’t in a hurry for our dinner reservation, and there was no one else around, so we didn’t say anything.

We rode up behind these women. They were older, white, probably in their sixties, and two of them were rather heavy. They wore denim shorts, and they all had some sort of American flag pattern, or at least red, white, and blue—on a shirt, a vest, or a ribbon around a straw hat—almost a uniform of a certain class of DC tourists.

Behind us I heard a loud voice yell, “Stand on the right please.” I actually felt a little bad for the women—even with the “please” the loud voice seemed rude. I turned to look and saw an African-American man, probably around my age, coming up the stairs in long strides. He had extremely dark skin, a shaved head, sunglasses, and was nicely dressed. The women moved to the left.

“Thank you, ladies,” he boomed. “We stand on the right here. If you’re on the left, you have to sashay.” He was either flamingly gay, or did a good impression of it, and he continued past them, chanting, “Sashay. Sashay.” The women began to laugh, and Brian and I did, too. We took the opportunity to pass the women, and we turned in the same direction as the man, toward Washington Circle.

“You got to sashay, ain’t that right, beautiful?” I felt a hand rest on my shoulder for a brief moment. Then he passed us, saying to himself, “Sashay, sashay, sashay.”

Don't talk to strangers

In the first few months after I moved to Washington, I noticed that strangers didn’t talk to me on the Metro the way they did on BART. Other Californians in my graduate program also noted that people were less friendly with strangers on the East Coast. I don’t think of myself as someone who talks to strangers. I rarely strike up a conversation with someone I don’t know—I’m too much of an introvert. But when someone speaks to me, I nearly always answer. Usually it’s a tourist who needs directions. Occasionally, someone will ask me about the book I’m reading. I will commiserate about the weather when a stranger offers to share his umbrella at the bus stop on an unexpectedly wet day. And these superficial conversations with strangers don’t make me uncomfortable.

There has been a man on my bus in the evenings, who has decided to initiate conversations with me. Something about him made me uncomfortable the first time, a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. I was sitting near the front of the bus, talking with Marvin, the driver. When we pulled out of the Pentagon, I opened my book.

“Excuse me? Miss?” I was totally engrossed in my book, and it took me awhile to realize I was the one being addressed. I looked up. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

I looked at the man. I had noticed him when I first boarded the bus. He had been talking on the cell phone in a loud, slightly twangy voice. He was sitting near the front of the bus, and I had wished he would go to the back to finish his conversation. And now, he was sitting not too far from me, wanting to know if he could ask a personal question.

I glanced at Marvin. I could tell he was listening.

“Okay,” I said, not totally comfortable with it, but not feeling that I could say no. Besides, if the man was out of line, I knew Marvin would make him get off the bus.

“How many pages have you read?”

I was relieved. It seemed like a silly question, but it wasn't exactly personal. I looked down at my book, checking the page number. I don’t usually use a bookmark, choosing instead to note the page that I’m on, so I knew how many pages I’d read since I’d left work, how many I’d read on the Metro, how many I’d read on the bus from the Pentagon.

“Of this book?”

“Just since you’ve been on this bus.”

“Um, eighteen.”

“In what? Four minutes? Are you some kind of speed reader?”

“I—no. It’s a good book.” [Actually, it was a great book, and if you haven’t read The Kite Runner, you need to. Now.]

He apologized for bothering me. We exited the freeway, and I got off a few stops later.

I didn’t think about him again, until I was waiting for the bus earlier this week. Brian and I had ended up on the same train coming home, and I was talking to him when the same man interrupted me to ask the time. I answered him, and turned back to Brian.

“Now is that really the time? You aren’t one of these people who sets your watch 5 minute ahead or something?”

“No,” I told him. He, Brian, and I had a brief conversation about people who set clocks ahead. Then the bus came, and Brian and I spent the ride home talking with a woman who lives in our building. When we got home, and I mentioned that the man was the same one who had asked me about the book, he agreed that something about the man made you think he was weird.

Yesterday it happened again. I had noticed the stranger in line behind me for the bus. I settled down to read, and tried not to notice the man when he sat down across the aisle from me. Marvin wasn’t driving, and I was not up front near the driver.

“Excuse me, miss?” The bus was moving off of the freeway, merging onto the traffic circle. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

I didn’t want to say yes, but I wasn’t sure why. His last personal question had been harmless. But I felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know him. I didn’t know the man who had offered to share his umbrella with me while we waited for the Metro bus outside the Spanish embassy a few weeks back. But I had taken him up on his offer, and over the course of a few bus rides we had gotten to know each other. His name is Miles, and his wife had a baby girl back in December. He’s not a stranger anymore, but he started out that way. Why did this feel different?

I didn’t say yes. I just looked at him, waiting.

“Have you ever considered growing your hair longer?”

I turned away from him, looking straight ahead. I noticed that the woman in front of me had stopped reading. I didn’t know her name, but I’d smiled at her in greeting as I got on the bus, as we use the same bus stop and we have spoken casually before. I could tell she was listening. I wished Marvin was driving.

I didn’t know what to say. It was a personal question, and while I couldn’t say exactly why I didn’t like that he had asked me, I was certainly uncomfortable. I considered not saying anything.

“I’m not going to talk with you about my hair,” I told him at last, not looking at him, as the woman in front of me pulled the cord to request the next stop.

The man apologized, and I rose to follow the woman whose name I didn’t know but who was not a stranger off of the bus.

We had gotten off one stop before ours, and walked up the hill together. She told me that I had been right to not simply ignore the man, but to be direct with him. She had requested the stop, thinking it would be a good idea to just get away from that man. She turned to walk down her street as I walked up the stairs in front of my building. Next time I see her at the bus stop, I will ask her name.