the metro.

so i'm getting kind of bored with my blog posts and wanted to revert back to just telling you random stories from my days here in washington. here goes.  the metro is a magical tube that scoops you up at one place and pops you out at another in mere minutes.  the only problem about living here without a car is that i take the metro everywhere and thus have no idea how the neighborhoods connect to one another. this is not inherently negative it just warps the way i view dc a bit.  at any rate, the metro is also the best place in dc to observe humanity at its best and worst. mostly i love the metro because you literally never know what kind of people you will come in contact with or what they will have just been doing or if it will be ridiculously crowded or not.  today's adventure:

while lugging 15 pounds of groceries and other necessities back from target, my friend and i came upon the gallery place/chinatown exit where we had to disembark from the green line and switch to the red line to get home.  this detour found us on the red line platform surrounded by hundreds of children and their parents coming from...the circus.  that's right, barnum and bailey were in fact at the verizon center this weekend giving children of all ages in the DC Metro area the chance to watch the elephants walk around in a big circle, eat cotton candy and peanuts, and make their parents regret telling them the circus was in town.  there were cute kids with clown hats on, toy swords and light sabers, big foam hats, and then the middle aged dad who tried to entertain his young daughters by wearing THE creepiest clown mask/hat combination i've ever seen.  when the train came everyone rushed onto the metro and deciding it wouldn't be possible for us to sit down, my friend william and i awkwardly tried to stand by the door so we could get the heck off ASAP.  aside from being poked in the back of the leg with a little boy's light saber, there was surprisingly not a lot of drama with the circus crowd if you don't count the parents that were so clearly at the ends of their ropes you felt a little bad for them.  as we reached our destination and were able to escape the circus, i appreciated the way the metro brings people together and then spits you out again to go on your way.  there's a lot of shared experiences with fellow patrons that never go above ground.  i like it because you know there's always and x factor to your day. and that keeps it interesting.