On the Metro home last night, I offered up a prayer of thanks to the dark commuting gods because I scored an empty seat and a fairly empty car.\u00a0 But the commuting gods are fickle.\u00a0 I got the crazy car.
\n<\/p>\n
Nothing bad or particularly exciting happened.\u00a0 The crazy came in the form of a 350 pound woman who talked really loud.\u00a0 Like, Marine drill instructor loud, but just as a normal conversation voice to some poor, ugly girl sitting across the aisle from her.\u00a0 I gathered that they were co-workers.<\/p>\n
Once I adjusted to the volume enough to make out words, I couldn\u2019t help but follow the conversation.\u00a0 Along with everyone else on the train.\u00a0 Turns out Large Marge is something of a trainspotter.\u00a0 She described, at length, her Metro spreadsheet, where she\u2019s recorded every car number that she\u2019s ridden in, along with various notes on the condition of the car.\u00a0 She\u2019s been keeping this spreadsheet for a decade and ran through all the different types of cars, and what the numbers stood for.\u00a0 I\u2019m a little bit ashamed to admit that, as the train slowly rumbled towards Silver Spring, I became fascinated.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t any deep secrets to the car numbers.\u00a0 The information she was screaming is all over the net<\/a>, but her wistful review of the spreadsheet added that certain dash of love (or touch of lunacy) got me thinking about my own Metro experiences.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been riding the system since birth.\u00a0 Like crazy spreadsheet lady, I\u2019ve watched the cars \u201cgrow up.\u201d\u00a0 She actually started getting a bit tearful when she used those words.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve seen my little Breda\u2019s grow up.\u201d\u00a0 Sniff-sniff.<\/p>\n Even her co-worker looked uncomfortable at that point.\u00a0 But I almost joined in on the conversation, because the letters after the numbers were demystified.\u00a0 You often see an \u201cA,\u201d \u201cC,\u201d or both after the car numbers, which (I now know) indicate various points when the cars were refurbished. (Because the Metro thinks it can save money by constantly changing the upholstery of 30 year old unsafe cars riding on 40 year old lowest bidder tracks.)<\/p>\n Her spreadsheet (she was asked by a guy sitting three seats back) does not record any derailments, unexplained fires, or the seemingly ubiquitous \u201csick passenger\u201d and \u201cpolice situation\u201d delays.\u00a0 Many folks around me agreed, regarding the latter cases, that they never happen.\u00a0 The Metro just constantly announces those causes for the delay when, in reality, the driver was snorting cocaine off of the handicapped seats.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s what I said, and people stopped talking after that.<\/p>\n My morning commute today was, as usual, unexciting, till I got to the elevator.\u00a0 As a rule, I take the freight elevator to avoid the people, but that option was off the board today so I rode with the commoners in the normal elevators.\u00a0 Every year, my company has a big ass convention, and the building empties out.\u00a0 All the important people go to the convention, while all of us fuckshits get to stay behind and make rubber band balls and (as I did last year) have Death Race 2000 badminton matches out in the cubical mazes.\u00a0 (My bonus, two years ago, came in the form of a children\u2019s badminton set.)<\/p>\n This year, my plan is to continue what I\u2019ve been doing for the last half year \u2013 watching shit on CBS.com \u2013 because I\u2019ve decided to never work again.\u00a0 Though, for the next few days, I\u2019ll be able to do that with fewer phone calls and not as many whining co-workers creeping around trying to figure out what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n So, the elevator.\u00a0 Two women get on, and I hunker into a corner with my sunglasses and try to make myself vanish.\u00a0 They\u2019re talking along much the same lines as I\u2019m thinking \u2013 thank god it\u2019s convention time.\u00a0 No bosses, no co-workers.\u00a0 One of the ladies fist pumps the air and cheers.\u00a0 She turns so that she\u2019s talking both to me and to her companion and says:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to sit down, pop some popcorn, watch some movies, then talk on the phone and fart at my desk.\u00a0 All before lunch!\u201d<\/p>\n Her companion backed away, and we had a floor of silence before I could escape.<\/p>\n I guess, in the end, I don\u2019t really mind going to work.\u00a0 I just wish there was a massive depopulating event.\u00a0 I\u2019d say that I wish I was the last living person, but I know that\u2019s unrealistic.\u00a0 So roll on that old suitcase nuke and wipe out a third of the population.\u00a0 That\u2019s all I ask.\u00a0 One third.\u00a0 And let me choose which ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On the Metro home last night, I offered up a prayer of thanks to the dark commuting gods because I scored an empty seat and a fairly empty car.\u00a0 But the commuting gods are fickle.\u00a0 I got the crazy car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[36,399,400],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dc","category-wage-slave","tag-commute","tag-dc","tag-wage-slave"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1084,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}