Human Trafficking...it's a dirty business

D.C. comes ALIVE after five o'clock!  It is no wonder...the work day has come to an end and people emerge from their cold sterile cubicles into the streets, eager to leave the office behind and enjoy a night of freedom and leisure.  But, before one can embark on such a night...one has to bravely go where WAY too many have gone before...underneath the city's streets through dirty tunnels and passages...and cram onto germ-infested trains..stuffed with hundreds of other humans all desperate to get out of dodge!

Thousands of people pour into each station completely filling the platforms and every available space.  There are no lines...no sense of order.  People slowly squish closer and closer as the trains arrive trying to maneuver themselves in such a way guaranteeing they are the FIRST to get on.  I can't help but chuckle as I see grown men and woman running full boar (bodies, bags, briefcases, flying everywhere) trying to make it on the train...( "Hurry!!!! It's the last train out of Nam!!!!") only to then have the doors shut right before they make it..."NO" they yell...hand out dramatically...watching their train pull away.  And they are left, dejected, heaving from their physical exertion...for another 2 minutes...until the next train comes.

As devastating as it is to wait for two more minutes for the next train...it doesn't necessarily get any better once you make it on the train.  You are literally swept (it is either that or get trampled) onto the train as if caught in a river's current.  And just like a river's current does not ebb or change course when there is an object in its path...neither does the flow of "human debris" pouring onto the metro trains...pushing anyone standing in its path aside.  Once the car has been packed so tightly that the doors can barely close, it departs.  With every bump, turn, push on the break some part of you collides with some part of several other people...all the while trying to never make eye contact pretending you don't seem to notice.  Sometimes I wonder if there are cameras set up and the drivers make it as bumpy and jerky as possible just to see the awkwardness that ensues.  There was one ride in particular that no matter how I situated myself my posterior was smashed against the man behind me...I wanted to turn around and say..."what can I say...it's my best side"...but figured drawing more attention to the fact that my behind was "all up in his grill" would only make it more awkward.

Some of my favorite metro trips have included some woman preaching to the whole car that she was in hell and God saved her.  Let's just say...she had a LOT of passion.  Or, the time when, as usual...the train was overcrowded and this elderly Asian woman sitting down was reading her newspaper, and the backpack of the girl standing in front of her kept brushing her newspaper.  I watched as she continued to get more and more irritated until she started hitting the girl's backpack with her newspaper!  I have seen a number of uses for newspapers in my day i.e. wrapping for glass items, paper machete projects, fire starter, bedding for the homeless, spit wads, heaven forbid....reading, and even toilet paper...guess I have one more to add to the list.