Metrosexual

The DC Metro, in a perpetual effort to repair the stretch of rail between Fort Totten and Takoma decided in its infinite wisdom to shut down that segment of the red line on Friday night. And when the train operator announced that Brookland was the final stop, the passengers reacted with the intelligence that I expected.

First, they sat there for about 10 minutes, ignoring the train operator's directions and the fact that the lights on the train had been shut off. Then, they stumbled out onto the platform like confused zombies, each face looking more clueless and panic stricken then the next. (This, I can forgive. Because the who the hell has ever gotten off the Metro at Brookland anyway.) Everyone made a mad dash to the escalator and then to the shuttles that Metro had generously procured for us. And they weren't the cheap old ones either. These were the pretty new red ones with hybrid capabilities.

This was when people started to really get on my nerves.

"Where is this bus going?" "Where are they taking us?" "Why aren't these buses labeled?!" This bus is taking us to Disney World. Shut the fuck up.

Inside the bus, people continued to complain about how ridiculous the Metro is and how inconvenienced they were. They forget that places like the Amazon don't even have metrobuses. So when the train shuts down in the Amazon, they probably have to ride giant domesticated anacondas from one station to another.

And inside the bus, it is crowded so I am forced to stand at the joint between the front and the back of the bus. Everytime we make a turn, space and time are bent and I fall over onto the people in front of me.

A middle-aged woman whose life revolves around the Washington Post takes it into her hands to hypothesize why all of this is going on. She then proceeds to lead a discussion group about the history of Metro accidents and their casualties. The fact that she knows everything about Metro crashes gives her life meaning and has allowed her to carve a niche in a world that is otherwise cruel to middle-aged women obsessed with reading the Washington Post. Nine people died for her niche.

I'm also bitter towards this woman because in this situation, I tend to sit by myself perfectly quiet and altogether motionless. She, on the other hand, has already formed a little club in the back of the bus with a pretty hot guy as one of the founding members. They are having so much fun socializing and talking about all the people that have been killed by being hit by a Metro train. And here I am, sitting in the joint of the bus, kinda wishing that the Earth would open up and swallow us all.