A funny thing happened on the Metro

For those of us who use public transportation, we see all kinds of weird things. Feel free to interject your funny/weird transportation story later.

Today, I got on the Metro to go to lunch and took my seat near a surreal protestor who had a very poorly handmade sign that said, “Bomb Martha’s Vinyard!” in big letters on the tiny sign. The sign itself was the size of a sheet of paper with a rectangular cardboard handle. I thought it was funny but my entertainment didn’t end there. You see, today was my personal entertainment day on the Metro rides. My next set of humour was thrust upon me as a group of middle-aged tourists and the young kid who was around 10 who was with them got on with the “leader” of a man with them telling them that they have to hurry up to get off the Metro when the doors open at the Smithsonian stop. He says they only have a few MINUTES to get off when the doors open. I am thinking yeah right…that is way too long but don’t say anything because I am eavesdropping. Anyway, as the train pulls into the station they all get up out of their seats and work their way to the door stumbling around because all four of them were too dumb to grab hold of anything while the train was stopping. What did they thing? Somehow the trains in DC have some miraculous inertial dampening field available to them from UFO technology or something? I laughed at that watching them stumbling all around. That isn’t even the funniest part. After the train stops they are lined up in what appears to be youngest to oldest at the door facing the tracks instead of the ones facing the platform. By this time I am quietly laughing to myself. For those who don’t know, you can clearly see out of the window and see what lies beyond while you are in the station. I know they were expecting special treatment like walking along the electric track to see if roller skates will roll on it like the trains do or something. Then we hear the “Doors opening” voice come in from the monitors. All the people on that train pour out the door behind these four people who are lined up at the door going past the goofy protestor and the four people stand unaware. Now I start laughing out loud since the man is telling them that once the doors open they have to hurry out or they won’t all make it. Eventually, I see I am not the only person laughing and the goofy protestor tells them that the door is open on the other side. You would think that they would know this as at least 15 people just went out it and several more came in. So they all turn around and rush out it in reverse order with the kid last. I was thinking that it was the stop they wanted but couldn’t believe that anyone would be so dense as to not notice a stream of people going in and out behind them. Anyway, just as the kid goes out the doors shut immediately behind them. It was so funny. He almost got shut in for exactly what the older man (he was the oldest and probably in his mid to late 40’s) was warning them against. It was so funny. :slight_smile:

Then coming back to work I had the freak woman sitting near me telling her boyfriend that the last time she went to the doctor last week he told her she looked like someone slashed her across the face (I look and it doesn’t). I tried not to stare at her ears too much though since she looked like she had around 10 earrings per ear at one time but they had all long since been torn out. She was the ragged ear woman. It was also surreal but not nearly as funny as the earlier one. So after I got off the metro I went out and bought 10 lottery tickets thinking my day couldn’t get any more surreal unless I won the lottery.

HUGS!
Sqrl

the other day, this guy turns to me on the metro and asks “does your girlfriend’s shit stink?” after overcoming the initial shock, i said, well, yes it smells like, well, shit. it was actually this couple having a heated argument over bodily functions. i talked to them for a while about the nastiest things you can think of. talk about some weird stares.
on a sidenote, i know i’ve been in dc too long when my blood boils at the site of people standing on the left side of the escalator. stand on teh right, walk on the left! damn tourists…

:rolleyes:
:stuck_out_tongue:
:wally

:smiley:

Well once I got out of a concert and was heading home (the concert was at a small venue downtown) and while waiting for the train I got some homeless guy coming up to ask me if I had a bus ticket or something so I gave him one then he asked me if I believed in Jesus. After that he started rambling about an asteroid heading for earth and that everyone was going to die…

Another time there was a group of drunks on the train singing ‘American Pie’ and I joined in (I was completely sober at the time I had just gotten of work). It was fun.

Yet another time I was waiting for the train to come so I could go home (again after work) and I got to talking with this guy who was maybe a year or two older then me. He asked me why I was going home at this time of night and that I must be the only one going home (it was a Saturday and only about 10 pm) He then told me he was going out to get drunk for the second time that day and his brother was at home still sleeping off the first one. After that he gave me a ticket to one of the clubs (one of the not so good ones as I found out when I tried to give it away) and the name and place to find a guy who could get me a fake id (which he gave me when I said I was underage… which I am for a couple months still)

I’ve been running late all week, and where I should get to work by 9-9:30, it’s been closer to 10am this week. So, I miss the worker drone crush as I take the Red Line in from Grosvenor to Dupont Circle.

Thursday morning. It’s about five of 10 when the train stopped at Friendship Heights. A man gets up, and starts to walk to the door to exit. As the doors open, another man, sitting by the door, about three rows from where the first man got up from, stops the exiting rider and says “Sir, you dropped something.”

The first man stops, checks his pockets quickly and makes sure that he is, in fact, holding his backpack. The second man points back at his seat, where something small, shiny, and black has fallen out of the seat and onto the floor. It’s cylindrical, and thus starts to roll away from the action.

The man sees this and starts to walk back toward it, but for some reason can’t seem to focus on it and grab it.

Meanwhile, people get off and on the train, as per usual. The Voice of the Metro intones “Doors closing.” The man is still grasping at the floor for this thing. The doors close. The man can’t find it, and looks up at us that are watching him. “I can’t see a thing, I just had my eyes dilated,” he says. The woman sitting next to me, and I, both of us entranced by this scene, start laughing. The do-gooder sitting by the door smiles, and gets up to retrieve the mystery item for the man, who has just missed his stop.

Just as the second man reaches down to grab the item, the dilated traveler sees the item, picks it up, and says, “Oh, this isn’t mine.” More laughter.

He sets it back down on the seat and looks out the window as the station, already blurry in his eyes, blurs even further as the train rolls away, toward Tenleytown-AU. He goes back to the door and stands by the exit. Smiling he says, “Good thing I have the whole day off.”

The moral to this story, you ask? There’s a good reason why strangers don’t talk to each other on the DC Metro.

One day as I was going to work, the bus stopped at the transfer spot, and just before we left a woman came running from the same-numbered bus going the other way. She started talking before the driver had the door open, on and on about how she had missed her transfer at the previous loop … because she had been absorbed in a conversation with that driver. I don’t think she even took a breath before we got to where I get off, about a dozen blocks away.

I wonder if she made her transfer the second time around …

There are always little adventures on transit!