Jury Doodie
Like unexpectedly stepping in a fresh mound of dog doodie in a park (in new shoes, none the less), getting jury duty is a pain-in-the-ass. It sneaks up on you like that putrid stench at the bottom of your shoe you don’t notice until you’re in the house, except the stench of jury doodie smells legally binding. You can’t wash or scrub it off. So imagine my frustration when I get assigned jury duty as a college student on a day where I have a full set of classes, and in a courthouse so far away I have to shelp to.
I do not think I should have to serve jury duty or fulfill my “civic obligation” (as it says in all caps and in bold on my notice). Here’s why:
Washington, DC is not a state. Why should I have to “serve the state” if the government refuses to give me the privilege of living in one?
In the dirty turmoil of Europe in the Middle Ages, loyalty and service to the state were defined by the wretched feudal system, but at least the monarchy could keep this policy without argument from their subjects complaining that they do not even live in a state (that’s not to say that the feudal system of the Medieval period was a cake walk compared to my current situation, I’m just saying that current authority should not subject district residents to something like jury duty when we are not residents of a state nor have a vote).
I’d rather step in dog shit than have to unjustly serve jury duty. At least dog shit doesn’t deprive me of any rights. Dog shit doesn’t prevent me from having a vote in Congress, and best of all, IT GOES AWAY. In fact, I welcome dog crap on my shoe. I’d welcome it with open arms as long as it meant no jury service.
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
The glory of the SmarTrip card
It’s so convenient. So brilliant, so quick, so easy. You don’t have to fumble with tedious paper farecards, you don’t have to wait for your farecard to come out of the other end of the machine, and you simply breeze past tourists and their flimsy paper tickets (and just think of how cool you look when you tap and go! I still “ooooo” and “aaahhhh” in my head every time I use it and see the barrier magically swing open at the tap of my card).
It’s a brisk and painless process that lets you simply glide on by. Catch a fanny pack-clad tourist in the corner of your eye headed your way to ask you how to change lines at Metro Center to get to the Smithsonian? Just slyly tap the SmarTrip pad with your card (it can even be done through your wallet!) and walk on through (or make your escape, depending on how you look at it) as the gate opens (“Oops! I’d better go before it closes!”). And you’re off!
Thank you, DC Metro, for making my life a lot easier by introducing the SmarTrip card. It’s my little piece of plastic from heaven.
I’m going off the rails
I had a headache yesterday. The kind where you’re tired and are therefore easily irritated. Also where bright lights are like swords to the cornea and hammers to your skull.
So imagine my discomfort (and short-temperedness) when I went to the Dupont Circle metro to catch a train going home after my night gaurd fitting at the dentist (I seem to run into a lot of annoyances to and from the dentist. I think it’s a further sign that I should avoid them because they’ll just deliver bad news and then charge me an arm and a leg to get the bad news, and then even more to correct the bad news). So I go in a few weeks earlier for a bad toothache. I come out learning that I have not one, not two, but THREE cavities. I went in to get just one tooth checked out, and left finding out that I’ve got three messed up ones that need fillings, and that I must be grinding my teeth at night and need a night gaurd. …And up goes the dental bill.
Now, on my way back home after attaining my night gaurd, I swipe my SmarTrip, enter the station, and I feel my jaw drop to the floor. Actually, I’m convinced it may have dropped past the earths crust. Maybe even past it’s core.
See the station was positively swamped. Malled. Crawling with tourists and business people alike. AT RUSH HOUR. The clueless stood aimlessly on the platform taking up space, and the locals made an effort to move around to where there was space so they wern’t in the very center blocking people’s way when trying to walk in or out of the station. It was a challenge trying to squeeze myself through the crowd. It was like trying to walk through double the population of Mexico City.
I’ve considered myself lucky so far this summer avoiding the summer tourist crowds. Very, very lucky. I should have known it wasn’t going to last.
No one was able to get on the first train that arrived. No one. Know why? Because a tourist with no common sense decided it would be a positively brilliant idea to hold the doors while they tried to close. Guess what? Metro doors are NOT elevator doors, people! They don’t just open at your own will. It’s a TRAIN. And trains break down when they are not handled properly, which is exactly what happened here. And every other day by a tourist for that matter.
It’s no wonder I need a nightgaurd. The stress and indignation caused by these situations make me grind my teeth like crazy. I think that the tourists should be paying for my $900 dental work.
The only people who probably feel even stronger and are more affected by these situations than myself, and who I give my full support to, are the noble people who operate DC Metro. I cannot imagine the multitude of headaches they suffer daily because of tourist carelessness. I’m just a passenger on this crazytrain. Metro employees, forced by some serious bad luck to have to deal with plainly unknowing tourists, spend all day under ground trying to keep the whole system under control. Now the system can’t stay under control if people are shutting down and breaking trains due to holding the damn doors open.
A metro employee tried to explain this over the station intercom (in more polite words) as I kept walking down the platform to find as open a space as possible, watching as eager eyes awaited the next train. I didn’t even bother trying to get on the next approaching train as I saw everyone crowd as quickly as possible toward the edge of the platform (which, geniuses, you’re not supposed to do. Hence the raised spots on the edge below your feet. The excessively (and quite audibly) honking horn on the train as it approaches should be a clue, too).
So here’s where a metro train is like an elevator: when an elevator gets to your level and the doors open, you let the people in the elevator off before you get on, correct? It is proper etiquette and is common knowledge. No one would want to create a jam or make an embarassing collision with a stranger. Apparently, this is not a practice many tourists follow. Once the train doors opened, (and immediately after a metro employee announced to the station “Let people out before you board”), like a stampede of wild animals, people scurried through the doors and blocked any passage for people already on the train to get out.
Christ.
Way to go, people. Way to go. A round of applause for you and the air circulating in your head. From living here my whole life and seeing things like this happen time and time again, I think I have finally learned that humans are truly buffoons.
Location, Location, Location
I am a college student (hence I have not posted anything new in quite some time) and I recently received an e-mail informing me that I am eligible for a scholarship because I am a student from Washington, D.C. This scholarship (we’ll call it the “George and Natalie Magnolia Scholarship”) intends to financially assist students from the District with their academic expenses. In order to submit myself for consideration, I had to write an essay and fill out a form.
For background purposes, I googled “George and Natalie Magnolia” to find out more about the people and the scholarship program before I wrote my essay.
The program has been around since 2001, and the website provided a handy little list of recipients of the scholarship for the past eight years. Only two students get the scholarship each year. 2 students x 8 years=16 students total. OUT OF THE SIXTEEN RECIPIENTS OVER THE PAST EIGHT YEARS, ONLY TWO OF THE RECIPIENTS WERE ACTUALLY FROM D.C.
I am kind of disgusted.
In fact, I haven’t even heard of half of the places these people were from. Brambleton, Virginia? Palmyra, Virginia? What?
Only two–two scholarship recipients were from the very place this scholarship program is based in and directed to.
I read this on their website: “The George and Natalie Magnolia Scholarship was established in 2001 to benefit University students from the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The scholarship assists qualified undergraduate students who have financial need and are in good academic standing.”
I ask: Is one necessarily “qualified” for this scholarship is one is not actually from Washington, D.C.?
Yes, the word “metropolitan” includes the city and its suburbs. BUT. Washington, DC has no suburbs. Maryland and Virginia are considered the “suburbs of Washington,” but they are not in Washington are they? So here’s what I propose to you George and Natalie Magnolia: I suggest you make the qualifications more specific. Instead of “…benefit students from the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area,” how about “…benefit students from Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia.”
(Notice I do not put a question mark at the end. This is more of a demand. Here’s why:)
That way you don’t mislead people into thinking the recipients of this scholarship who are from Brambleton, Virginia are from DC. Virginia is an entirely different PLACE. On a map–ANY MAP, there is a clearly visible BOARDER dividing Virginia and Maryland from DC. But no one looks at or reads maps anymore, do they? So one can’t possibly know about that can they? So please stop thinking/making people think Maryland, Virginia, and DC are the same thing.
I seem obnoxious, but New Yorkers probably feel the same way if someone from Buffalo told people they lived in Manhattan. At least in that situation, that person is still from the same state. My feelings are only magnified because Virginians and Marylanders are from completely different states. DC isn’t even a state yet. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: I do not have a voting representative in Congress. All who lie by telling people they are from DC when they are not do have a voting representative in Congress. When people do this I feel like my identity has been stolen. People don’t understand just how different Washingtonians are or DC is from everywhere and everyone else, not just Maryland and Virginia.
Taxation without representation! Whoot-whoot!
Nightmare in the Metro
I had this horrible dream in January that when I flew home for a visit from school in Boston and took the Metro from National Airport, it was positively bombarded with people– and they were ALL TOURISTS! In the dream, barely anyone was local, everyone was wandering aimlessly about with their bags, children, and incapabilities in tow (forcing me to zig-zag my way through them), and no one knew what in the hell they were doing! And as luck would have it, I didn’t have enough money on my SmarTrip to make my escape through the gate to the train, so I had to wait in an impossible line (it was really a clump; apparently tourists are incapable of forming a line let alone use a farecard machine) so I could put money on it. I watched as helpless and frustrated Metro employees tried to assist the confused with the farecard machines. Watching a tourist try to use a farecard machine in the metro is like watching my mother or father try to use a fairly new technological electronic product (like my mother’s DVD player or my father’s blackberry (well, err, anything technology-related really)): it’s painful, frustrating, and you just want to do it for them to move things forward. Really, people, this is not rocket science.
After filling my SmarTrip card with some money, I (ungracefully) stumbled my way through the mob to get to the train platform. Everywhere I went in the Metro people were shoulder-to-shoulder because, apparently, tourists also have no perception of how much space they take up or how much space they could make for others if only they took the initiative to look around themselves and actually notice the hordes of people around them stuggling to stretch a limb or two, or perhaps even BREATHE.
And what’s worse, at each stop the train made, it took an average of at least 10 minutes to actually leave that stop for the next because people thought that the doorway would be an excellent place to stand once they got on. Never mind the clearly audible automated voice that says, “Please stand clear of the doors. Thank you.” is played at each stop. Never mind the fact that when the doors close, they will crush and perhaps brake you or force you to loose a limb. Noooooo, sir. The average tourist who comes to D.C. thinks the doorway is a perfectly proper and convenient place to stand. You know what happens when they do this? The doors open and close, open and close, open and close, open and close, open and close, open and close. The voice repeats itself like a broken record: “Please stand clear of the doors. Thank you. Please stand clear of the doors. Thank you. Please stand clear of the doors. Thank you. Please stand clear of the doors. Thank you,” until the fool about to have a dent formed in his or her body gets some sense banged into their head by the doors, and chooses to move closer inside the car.
Dear. God. I need to wake up from this nightmare! Now. Nownownownownow. Apparently, it was so crowded that day because something big was going on at home. Something about change? It had to do with the White House? It was said that about 2 million people were there for that week?
Oh, wait. That actually happened. This was not a dream, it was Barack Obama’s Inauguration.
I’m a liberal from D.C.! Of course I wasn’t going to miss Obama’s Inauguration, are you kidding? So for Christmas, I asked for plane tickets home so I could come celebrate. When the hard reality hit me, in the end, it was all so worth it. Being home for the Inauguration was so fantastic that I decided I could bear this sort of madness to witness history.
But you’d better believe I didn’t take the metro to the National Mall the day after. Absolutely not.
Look at them! So many!
Stand to the right!
A typical scenario is this: I am running late for my dentist appointment in Dupont Circle (I am not all sunshine and rainbows to begin with because I very much dislike going to the dentist). I need to take the Metro from Tenly to Dupont to get there in time for my 1 o’clock. I hop off the train once it arrives in Dupont and walk up the escalator at a brisk pace. I tap my SmarTrip, breeze through the gate, and make my way up the second set of escalators (mind you, the Dupont escalator is one of the tallest and most exhausting of them all).
I don’t stand on it, I walk up. I never stand on the escalators because I have absolutely no patience for something that carries me up; I feel absolutely useless just standing on a moving object for a substantial chunk of time. That’s about 5 minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
So I make my way up–I’ve got about 7 minutes to spare before 1! I’m about two-thirds of the way up when I am halted by two people on either side of the escalator, taking up the whole thing, making it impossible for anyone who is late for something or actually cares about their physical fitness to get by them. After standing behind them, clearing my throat, and making my presence as apparent as possible to them, the guy on the left still does not move. Catching my breath (honestly, the Dupont escalator might as well be like a mile high), I say a hasty “Excuse me,” and walk past them as soon as the tree stalk in my way moves.
Once out of the metro, I walk to my dentist’s office. Once I get there, I am five minutes late, and have to wait an entire century (ok, 15-20 minutes) before I can get my damn cleaning.
Now, for anyone who lives or has visited an urban environment, it is common city knowledge/etiquette to stand to the RIGHT of an escalator, so others who wish to walk can go up the LEFT side. Why so many people fail to grasp this concept completely baffles me.
A Tribute to the Sunday Source
Sunday Source section of the Washington Post: I ask why? Why have you left me???? What happened to you? Why must the dwindling economy tear us apart so? Next to coffee and the the Sunday Funnies, you were what I looked forward to most on Sunday mornings! I miss the “Trend Spotter” section and most of all, I miss “The Three Wise Guys.” Where will I go to for witty banter? For fashion? What ever will I read now on Sunday mornings? After I finish reading the funnies and Parade, I would always turn to you next—the best for last. There is now a small, but very present gap in my life. You no longer exist to fill it.
The New York Times’ Sunday Styles section is hardly an appropriate substitute, but it is what I have turned to. You are greatly missed Sunday Source.
New Title
Readers, I need a new title for my blog. It’s barely a week old, and I sort of chose the current one (“The Washingtonian’s Dilemma”) arbitrarily, with the intention of coming up with a better, more solid one later. I am debating between several currently. SO, in the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions, please let me know!
Summertime’s a’comin…
*sigh*
Fellow Washingtonians, you know what that means. They come in numbers big and small, they travel in packs, they come bearing bellies clad with fanny packs and cameras, and they are coming to dominate our city once more this summer! Thaaaaaat’s right, it’s tourist season (Take cover! Brace yourselves! Put money on your SmarTrip before the farecard machine lines are bombarded with confused tourists who can’t figure out how to use the damn machine!). And this year promises to be one of the biggest yet for our city, just after a historic election and a new President in office. Obama’s appeal will draw the masses to D.C. this summer (even though the economy is, shall we say, flushed down the depths of a bottomless toilet?). I admit that tourists aren’t all bad. They are most certianly good for an economy boost, and… and… well, they’re good for the economy.
Readers, coming this summer, prepare for my posts on tourists.
Eleanor Holmes Norton
You are awesome. Enough said.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/85766/april-24-2007/eleanor-holmes-norton
