Many of my friends have questioned my sanity when I took a new job in downtown DC again. I mean, sure, I could have kept driving to Rockville and took advantage of the occasional 2 hour drive home to catch up on my zen meditation but the magic and allure of traveling into the city proved too great.

It may sound strange to people who don’t work in DC that anyone would EVER want to make the trek downtown. For the most part you’re stuck in your car in a seemingly endless traffic jam. If not that then you are at the mercy of WMATA and the Metro; countless broken escalators or a train schedule that’s as reliable as Congress. So why subject myself to this traveling Hell?

I like people.

I know, I know. It seems contradictory to what I say about most humans. Commuting into the city gives me the opportunity to witness what the wide spectrum of humanity is like and appreciate the beauty and absurdity of it all. Mostly the absurdity.

Riding the Metro is like a way for you to judge others so you feel good about yourself. Horrible, isn’t it? You just can’t help it! You see people with their carefully cultivated thousand yard stare who try not to make eye contact with you; people who have no sense of personal space; people who are looking at you as you’re judging them.

One of my favorite type of person to observe is the kind who just doesn’t give a shit. You look and you wonder why they just don’t change (____ fill in the blank ___) about themselves. Before anyone lambasts me and breaks out into Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” lets look at the example to the right.

I remember an episode of Ally McBeal where a man refused to deal with his comb over and did something similar.

Buddy, let it go. We can tell you’re balding.

To be continued…