My Stranger Week, or How Public Transit is More Dangerous than Getting into a Car with Strange Men

I took this picture from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  The Reflecting Pool is true to its name.

Wasn’t sure how to properly capitalize the title, so bear with me if I did it wrong.

Well, I haven’t been keeping track of my daily schedule, but today will give you an idea of how busy it is.

7:15 AM: Wake up and prepare for internship

9 AM - 2 PM: Intern at ONE

2 PM: Get on wrong bus and be delayed

3:50 PM: Run to class and collect dues from an APO brother on the way (because I am Treasurer)

4:00 PM – 5:15 PM: Calculus class

5:15 PM – 6:30 PM: Dinner with Eleanor

6:30 PM – 8:15 PM: Rest to avoid dying from doominess.

8:15 PM – 9:36 PM: (time of writing) update APO dues spreadsheet (because I am Treasurer)

Until I finish writing this – 10:45 PM: Study

10:45 PM: APO Executive Board meeting (because I am Treasurer)

At least I got the 6:30- 8:15 break.  I’m not even sure what I did, but it’s okay.  My brain must’ve just shut off.

The title of the blog post proves very significant.  I had two significant and significantly different encounters with strangers.

On Thursday, my mom texted me something to the effect of “My coworker’s son and his friends are visiting D.C. and have never been there before, please call them with ideas.”  So I texted the guy, David, and we decided to get brunch on Saturday so I could bring him the Washington Post with the weekend’s events and just greet him as a fellow human being.

Then things get awesome.  1) Saturday was my friend Lindsay’s birthday.  Boom.  She’s coming on the field trip, because what better way to spend your 19^th than with yours truly?

I'll give you four guesses as to who this is.

2)  Friday night, I find out: David and his travel companion Gio have a reservation for a tour of the Capitol, and it’s for four people—there are only two of them!  Bam!  Lindsay and I are coming along!  None of my friends or I have ever taken the time to email our congressperson to get the tickets, making this an incredible opportunity.

Then, the cherry on top: 3) We meet them Saturday morning, and they are nice.  Gio(vanni) is 19 and in community college.  David is in his lower-mid-20s and unknown life situation.  We get into their car even though we have never met them.  We don’t get kidnapped.  We do everything that D.C. has to offer the average tourist: the Capitol, brunch, Arlington National Cemetery, Iwo Jima Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Korean Memorial, White House.  Blam diggity blam!!!!!

Really, though, they were very nice and it was an awesome day.  The car was a rare and well-appreciated addition to D.C. life, making what would normally take an entire weekend more than doable in one day.  They treated us to brunch (okay, I did end up convincing them to let me pay for myself) and were really patient despite us getting lost 1000 times.  Good Amazing Race contestants, in short.

Me and Lindsay.

So that was my good stranger experience.  It was a day out of a family vacation, and a nice respite to college life.

Bad stranger experience time!

So remember how I got on the wrong bus?  That happened today.  I ended up very far away from my goal, then took a subway back to where I started and tried again.  I got on the right bus but accidentally sat next to a crazy person.

This guy was a full-blown verifiable savant, that’s the cool part.  The uncool part was that he was a guy in his fifties or sixties that was a full-blown verifiable crazy person.

Cool: He could tell me a lot of interesting things about Obama, including: his college career in detail; the specific dates that policemen searched him for drugs and how he was not caught with any; a direct quote about why he sends his daughters to private school; his IQ; his entire political career, etc.  He could tell me the number of books he (the savant) had read in the last 302 months and 17 days (a lot).  He could tell me how his IQ compared with every political figure I’ve ever heard of, and knew all of their exact IQs.  He knew every important date in his entire life, and listed some off.  When I told him my major, he listed every relevant department in the House and Senate that I could consider interning for, and whether or not they offered a stipend.

Not cool: Yeah, this sounds pretty cool.  But it was really creepy.  He would rattle off this information very quickly and for several minutes at a time, never meeting my eyes or pausing to include me.  He seemed homeless, he smelled like booze, he kept leaning in very close to talk to me, and I became very anxious.  He was listening to random music that was blaring (illegally) in the bus, and his clothes were really dirty.  He asked me if Whitney Houston was dead and if I had a boyfriend.  Before I knew he was not mentally sound, he told me to keep an eye out for his stop, which was the same as my stop, and I told him so.  So I was stuck sitting next to him for 35 minutes.  This makes me sound awful, but he was a very creepy, bad-vibes guy.  Anyway, nothing came of it and I can at least say I met a savant with a high IQ.

If I sound awful, please believe me that this guy was creepy as well as incredibly smart.  Have some faith in your friend who always gives others the benefit of the doubt, which is how she landed herself in this situation.  Also, on the first (wrong) bus, I swear to all deities that I wrote in my journal about how I felt bad for mentally unsound people stuck on the streets and how I wanted to improve D.C.’s conditions.  And I do.  I did talk to him for 35 minutes, I just felt very unsafe doing so.

So, if you think I’m awful, poo poo.

Love you guys.  My spring break plans are going home, and I’m kind of bummed not to see any of you for so long.

Happy trails and happy V-day.  Never forget: condoms are compostable.

-Rachael

P.S. To end on a happier note, I wonder if you guys remember this story from U.S. History.  Robert E. Lee is Mr. Virginia, as in he lives in Virginia.  Then the Civil War is like "I'm happening!" and Bobby Lee is like "Crap, do I care about the U.S. or Virginia more?!?!?!" but picks VA, even though his house overlooks D.C.  Then the Confederates lose.  Then Bob E. comes back to his house and is like "Bitches, did you really turn my estate into a cemetery?" and the U.S. or someone is like, "yep.  Das right.  Pick da winners next time." 

So now his house is in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery.  They call it a memorial to him, but in real life it's a big "eff you."  Cool story, right?