Garcia Media Life

(This is the subway door beckoning me just before it tried to kill me)

You know how sometimes you just want to disappear when something extaordinarily embarassing happens?  On the face of it, it was not a capital offense.  But did the engineer have to single me out?

So, you’re approaching an elevator and the doors start closing.  Folks have their different techniques but mine is the “elevator karate chop.”  Just before the doors close you swing your arm up and down, sensors detect there’s some life form there and the doors open back up.

Karate chops do not work on the Metro subway system.  I had rushed down the escalator to catch the train and I had almost made it and the doors started closing.  I tried to dart in.  The doors closed on a bag I was holding in front of me.  Some very nice guy tried to rescue me and the bag.  After a few seconds that seemed considerably longer, the subway doors finally unleashed their grip, reopened and I got in.   Ok- lesson learned.

But , no.  The subway driver gets on the intercom and says something to this effect—for the whole train to hear.  “Yo.  The guy in the green baseball cap, the blue jacket and blue jeans with the brown sneakers.  Metro doors do not work like elevator doors.  There was another train coming in 4 minutes.  You didn’t have to do that.”  He might have said some other stuff, but by then, I’m going….wait a second…I meet this description.  Holy Moly…he’s talking about me. 

People in the car are looking.  I turned to an elderly African-American woman on the train and smiled my best charming smile.  “Guess, I’m in trouble, huh?”  She flashed a quick grin then promptly returned to the usual stone-faced “Metro-look” most people have on the subway. 

Besides potentially losing an arm and a gift bag, I am afraid I may have also committed a subway etiquette faux pax.   Doing that sort of thing delays the train and makes the passengers quite unhappy.  As well as the driver.  Appropriately chastened, I hereby publicly pledge that I will wait until the next train in the future.   And when somebody does what I did, I will give them a vaguely dirty glance before returning to my stoney “Metro-look.”

Does this officialy make me a Washingtonian again?