We just got back from three eventful (and expensive) days in Washington, D.C. We live within driving distance of the capital. We have been told this geographic fact makes us fortunate. It behooved us to take advantage of this opportunity. It is kinda like your parents telling you to eat all your food because there are starving children in Ethiopia who would be overcome with joy to have just a spoonful of your peas, dammit.
Thus excess is sometimes the product of opportunity and the anticipated regret of not seizing that opportunity. We also live within driving distance of Appalachia, but because people aren't knocking down the door to visit the hillfolk, we have no urge to go there. Which is too bad, because I hear hotel rates there are quite reasonable.
Washington is a diverse microcosm of punks. Sit on a corner for a short spell and you will hear profanity in five different languages. You will witness myriad lewd gestures from cultures you've never heard of. Get in a car and you will engage in a automotive cold war, with aggressive BMWs and obstinate Acuras held at bay only by the specter of mutually assured body damage. A cacophony of horns will greet you at every microsecond hesitation and at every turn taken at less-than-breakneck speeds. You don't need a translator. Road rage is universal.
In the Museum of American History we watched a group of Latino kids jump out of the Lincoln's Hat line to take voyeur pictures of girls. We saw Hasidic Jews cut in line to see the First Ladies exhibit. On the National Mall some white guy threw his empty Coke bottle onto the gravel trail. We were bullied out of photo spots by crazy Asian shutterbugs.
Sometimes at home I am so overwhelmed by punks that I find myself putting the rest of the world on a Utopian pedastal, as if assholes are an American creation. A trip to D.C. with its smattering of international visitors was enough to remind me that jerks are global.
Posts
#136: My So-Called Life
15 years ago
