Like most "inner city" children, I went my entire life without the slightest clue about Les Miserables. I knew it was a play because there was a big ad for it on the page opposite the movie showtimes in the Style section of The Washington Post. With my elementary level Spanish, I took a stab at translating the French title to "The Miserables." I guessed that it was about a bunch of unhappy people. After seeing the trailer over the holiday weekend, I think I was right. Good job junior-high-school-me!
Speaking of the trailer...It was the first time I ever heard that song "I Dreamed A Dream." My wife told me I'm slow, but my knowledge of show tunes doesn't extend beyond It's A Hard Knock Life and I'll give you one guess as to when I first heard that. Just to show how strangely my mind works, as soon as I heard the song I thought about the metro. Part of my PowerPoint presentation to convince my wife to move up here was dedicated to transportation. "We don't even need a car! You can get everywhere on the metro and it's extremely reliable!"
I dreamed a dream of days gone by.
When hope was high.
Metro now charges you a dollar if you use a paper fare card. Not a dollar for the card. They charge you a dollar for every trip that you take using that paper card. When I left this city, the base fare was $1.10. It's now $1.70. But, the sixty cent increase does come with perks. There's now a gym inside most metro station--A stair machine actually. It's called "Club Escalator/Elevator Outage." During the summer months, they convert 50% of their cars into saunas, so that's a plus for the Bikram Yoga crowd. I'm not a big fan of their self defense classes. They're kinda advanced and they really just throw you into it without warning.
My all-time favorite though...the enrichment programs. You don't really appreciate how little time you have on this earth until you're stuck in a station or tunnel due to a "situation up ahead." Take this morning, for example. There was a 40 minute "delay" due to a switch malfunction. They really need a thesaurus down at WMATA headquarters. Delay sounds too nice. On the other hand...detainment, hindrance, obstruction. Those sound perfect! If I'm stuck in a tunnel for an hour, that's not a delay. That's imprisonment or captivity.
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed
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