Just Because Metro Contains the Letter 'T'

Happy birthday, dear Blog! Dial-A-For-Awkward is one year old, started out of a new year's project, and I hope it will continue just as it has for many years to come.

I decided it might be fun to go to DC, a few days ago, so here I am in DC. Actually, I'm in VA, visiting Emlyn, a camp friend, but we went into DC for the afternoon to each lunch with friends of mine, Dan and Zoë. Getting from VA to DC required taking the Metro. I am used to the T, the Boston public transport, and so the metro was quite confusing to me. First off, there is no inbound/outbound like you have in Boston, where, if you're going into the city it's inbound, if you're going out to the suburbs, it's outbound. Instead, they have confusing sign posts that are always in a diagonal to the way the train is going. Written on the sides are stops with arrows supposedly pointing to which side of the track the stops are on, but they don't actually point there because it's diagonal to both platforms. Why couldn't they have two posts, one on each side listing the stops? Sigh.

We did finally make it there, though, and met up with our friends, with whom we took the metro one stop further. While we were on the metro we were reading the caution signs which said, "Do not touch third rail." Dan commented, "Which one is the third rail? Isn't it usually in the middle, which is the second one?" Zoë replied, "I think it's the big one that looks dangerous. But they should probably just makes signs saying 'Don't touch the rails'." Dan replied, "Yes, and then two thirds of the time you would get lucky. Or what if you added a bunch more rails just to be confusing?" I added, "You could make a math problem. Don't touch rail x such that x is less than twice the square of..."

As we exited the metro and looked up at the electronic signs, Dan exclaimed, "Look, less than signs!" To which I replied, "Greedy ducks!" Because that is how I was taught about less than signs in elementary school. "Yeah but what are they eating?" Someone asked. "Each other. The one in the middle eats the last one and then is eaten by the one on the far left." Dan replied, "Oh how pleasant." I expanded, "Then it dies from starvation." Dan said, "So they eat each other and then starve to death. What a wonderful life."

"So the other thing I don't get about the metro," I said, "is exit fees. You have to pay on the way out. I mean, they write songs about that in Boston." Dan looked over at me. "Songs?" He asked. "Yes," I said. "They do!" "Do you mean the one song Charlie on the MTA, from forty years ago?" I nodded. "Yes, they write songs about that!"

By this time we were almost out of the station. Zoë went to refill her card, and Dan, Emlyn and I are left standing there. Dan motions to a baby carriage that is completely covered. "I always think it's weird when those things are completely covered. Like, you don't know what's in there. I bet there's a cougar in there. And when you open it up it jumps out, ROAR, and claws you."

By which time Zoë came back and was completely perplexed as to why Dan was talking about cougars. We then headed off to the restaurant which will be part two of this story to come tomorrow.


Sachi