While yesterday was the kind of day that would inspire a bored intern to do such a ridiculous thing as start a blog, today was the kind of day that would give such an intern something to blog about. What yesterday lacked in excitement has been made up for three-fold by an eventful series of thoughts that bear mentioning.
The day began, as most do, with the obligatory feeling of being turned into a sardine amidst the crowded confines of the DC metro transit system. For a 5'2" girl, the metro is less of a train and more of a living nightmare. Getting trampled is merely a day-to-day reality that a short person must face when braving the rush hour crowds of the orange and red lines. The metro, more than anything else, makes me absolutely certain the teleportation would be the greatest gift to mankind.
Somehow, though, being squished between a middle-aged business man and an ancient Indian woman causes me to stop and think. Ever since I was younger and would take the metro for a school field trip to Natural History Museum or the family's annual March for life excursion, I have played what I call "the metro game." Whenever I get bored on the metro, which is about as frequent as one would yawn during a mortgage law presentation, I make up stories about the different people I see. Maybe that middle-aged businessman is really in the CIA and is about to leave for a top-secret mission to Bangladesh. Perhaps the Indian woman behind me is on her way to be reunited with her long-lost son from whom she hasn't heard in over twenty years. These games, though they seem slightly ridiculous to me when typed out in a public forum such as this, remind me of a larger point: everyone has a story. The metro never fails to make me think of that.
We all spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about ourselves, worrying about our needs and our concerns, what is important to us. Does we ever stop to consider the deepest insecurities of the person we pass on the street? Who truly gives a second thought to the challenges in the life of another? But if you stop to think about it, everyone has a story just like you. My father always used to tell me, "Treat everyone you meet with respect, no matter what, because you never know what battles they are fighting." The metro, more than anything, reminds me of that fact.
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