Sunday, 10 July 2011

A Stranger's Land

I went out on Friday afternoon after work to watch a movie.  To get there....I had to use the yellow line on the Metro.  The movie went well and ended by 7PM....and I walked across from the theater in Alexandra to the Metro station to return home.  There, I discovered that I was going to be stuck for at least an hour (it turned out to be around 70 minutes).

The problem?  Some guy had jumped off the platform at the King Street station in front of an arriving Metro train.....suicide.  The subway car driver applied the brakes but it was too late.  This was number fifteen since early 2009.  The Metro management folks admit that it's gone on the increase and they can't really explain why.

This tends to be suicide-by-assistance.....they have to involve someone else to achieve their intended results. You could toss in the "show" aspects of this because it's in full view of at least fifty people.  The sad thing is that dozens of people will bothered for the rest of their life by this act, and the Metro driver will typically announce some kind of mental situation where he has to retire and they end up paying him some medical pension deal.

Journalists might eventually get around to the guy's name....but the rest of the story as to why he acted this out on King Street Station?  You will likely never know.

Eventually the train car came through and picked us up, and we rode through the King Street Metro Station....with thirty-odd Metro, police and medical folks working to clean up the situation.  Nothing made much sense to me.  You'd think a guy would just go out and do this kind of thing alone without involving dozens of other folks, but this guy had some agenda in mind.

About a month after I got to DC and started working....I proclaimed this phrase..."I'm a stranger in a strange land".  To be honest....after 540-odd days, I still feel that way.  And I don't think the feeling will get much better.