Metro Hell

I'm sure y'all are tired of my bitching about the metro and maybe if I could get my ass out of bed earlier I would have enough time to walk to work, avoid it altogether and spare you metro stories, but for now you are stuck because I am working too much and too tired to wake up early. This morning I took the short way to work (see above about waking up late) which entails transferring trains at Gallery Place. It's a nightmare every morning which is a large part of the reason I take the long way. Floods of people walk lemming-like up the escalators (well, most of them stand on the escalators in the way of people who would like to walk up them), around the corner and over to the platform where the red line train will appear to whisk them away to their next metro station. For me it's one stop so I like to walk all the way down the platform towards where I get off the train and then try to be one of the last on the train so that I don't have to push my way through the throngs of people between me and the door. So after puttering behind slow zombie commuters to the end of the platform I waited for a number of them to board the train before I got in. There was room for about 1/2 a person behind me. The rudeness of morning DC commuters came into play and fit two more people before the friendly "doors closing" lady made her announcement. Just then one rather large man Heismaned his way into the train pushing the people (including me) into the train as the doors shut. This left a couple of us teetering on one foot, trying to hold onto the closest bar (which in some cases was a foot or so away) so as not to fall on the people around us. I looked at the guy and said "Are you kidding me?" as he stood there like he had done nothing wrong. I'm not sure if I've become more confrontational since moving here or if it was the protection of music in my head that made me unaware I was speaking out loud.

To make matters worse this guy's utter disregard for all people not him had put me in such a position that as I lowered my arm to get out I hit a woman in the head with my elbow. I immediately apologized, she was nice and understood, but it still sucked. To prove that it was possible for him to be a bigger ass, the guy managed to block 3/4 of the door that we were all trying to get out of and I almost tripped after having to rub against him to exit. I've felt dirty in a bad way ever since. Ugh.