Tourists made me late today. There was a high school model UN conference on the GW campus so children, as loud as they were pubescent, were running around in every direction I turned. On the metro, the case was no different. On the blue line, they surrounded me, most likely going to the capital for a tour. When I reached my transfer point at L’Enfant Plaza, I nearly ran off the train, ecstatic to finally escape the MUN kids. I entered the green line train to Greenbelt, and took a seat in the backrow. As I sat there, I started thinking about how different these two lines truly are.
The blue line, connects most of the wealth of the city. From the shopping centers of Eastern Market and Pentagon City to the tourist sites of the Capital, the Smithsonian, and the Arlington Cemetary, to the GW campus, people on this train are wealthy. The green line is different. This train connects the rest of the city; Real DC.
Both trains have their own set of similar characters every day. On the blue line you tend to see fat tourists with cameras hanging from their necks. On the green line you see young men with tattoos and chains from their necks. On the blue line, you see loud obnoxious collge students (or high school MUN kids). On the green line, you see middle aged men, wearing nikes playing loud rap music from their flip phones. On the blue line, you see scarves and ties. On the green line, you see doo-rags. It’s less than a 30 second walk from one train to the other, and yet they are drastically different.
It was only a half-day today, so I was only going to be at school for two hours. It seemed to me, like nobody was doing work either. One kid was sitting around doing nothing, so I walked over to him. When I confronted him on doing nothing, he said that he wasn’t even scheduled for fourth period, which was half the day. I asked him if he wanted me to give him work, and surpisingly, he said yes.
- “There’s a fire in your gymnasium,” I said.
He looked at me with a bewildered expression.
- “Huh?”
- “This is a journalism lesson,” I said. “Pretend I’m the chief of the fire department, set up some questions and then interview me.”
He shrugged his shoulders, and responded with a quick “ok.” He then began typing five questions or so before calling me over. The interview went well, although he broke character a few times, and asked questions to Evan Koslof, not Mike Wallace, the “chief of the fire department.” I asked him what he planned to do after high school, and he told me that he knew he wasn’t interested in college. When I asked him why not, he said that he wanted to go to the Navy, and then go into law after. As we continued on with the interview, I really started to feel like we were making major strands. He then went to “get a drink,” and didn’t come back for 25 minutes. Oh well, for major strands.
He then left, for the final period, and I was left once again with nothing to do. One student named Cesar was working on an application for a job, called the United Alliance, when I offered to help him craft a resume. He had never made a resume before, so the exercise proved to be pretty helpful for him. I showed him how to manipulate words to make ordinary things seem more important than they actually are. For example, I showed him how an office assitant could become a “Student Liason to the School Administration” or how a four year football player could be a “Four year Varsity Athlete in Football”. I also started to show him how to write a cover letter, although the bell interrupted the process, and he was gone a couple minutes later.
The day was short (less than two hours for me), and relatively unproductive, but at least I helped two people, and that made me feel somewhat positively about my work that day. After the bell rang, I headed for the door, and began walking down the bumpy streets, peppered with construction sites.
As I was walking towards the metro, I witnessed a pretty odd interaction. There was group of nearly 20 people standing on a street corner. They were all black men whom looked to be between the ages of 18 and 24, and they all wore hoodies of various colors. To me they didn’t seem to be doing anything suspicious, but as I walked near, a cop car started backing up slowly toward them. Two officers then jumped out of the vehicle, one of which was a skinny Hispanic man, while the other was a large white man. The first officer told them to move down the street, to which nobody responded. It was at this point that the larger officer chimed in
- “Are you fucking deaf or retarded,” he yelled. “Get the fuck down the street. I’m not fucking around.”
The mass of people, mostly high school kids dispersed in all directions, including these three men in hoodies, who suspiciously dispersed in one direction on their own. When I crossed the street, I turned around, and watched the scene develop, staring directly at the large cop. He looked straight at me, and then back at the others. I pulled out my phone, and continued staring at him, as if to say, “I dare you to beat one of these people while I’m watching.”
The people dispersed, and the police officers then went into the car, before driving down the road, behind the suspicious people who ran away. It’s interesting that in order to get a police officer to treat you well, all you need is a pair of nice shoes and a polo. Here’s my way to fight crime. Give every low income person a nice shirt and a watch. It might not lower crime, but it will certainly lower incarcerations.
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