A Salute to a Well-Played Evening

Three years ago today I wrote this.

Yesterday, as evidenced by this press release, Metro had another fucked up afternoon—I can’t blame them for the downed wires on the track, though, because even I realize that this was out of Metro’s control. However, it backed the system up big time, and by the time I got to Metro Center and saw the huge wall of people, standing on tiptoes to see if the next train was coming and squaring their shoulders to plow through the crowds and get onto the train, I turned to IP, cranky, and said:

“We could just go to Gordon Biersch. We could have a couple of beers and just go home for dinner, but if it’s between waiting down here or waiting in an air-conditioned brew pub, I choose the brew pub because I choose me.”

Well, I didn’t say that exactly. I just said that GB was probably a good idea given the time between trains. So we made the decision that yes, yes we were going to kill some time at GB and have a few brewskies (wait, did I just write brewskies!?) while Metro worked out its issues. Sure, we need to touch up the place before IP’s brother visits, but we’ll be fine—the apartment is two-thirds of the way there!

So exited Metro Center we did, where we were treated to the sight of a woman, crossing the street against the light at a leisurely pace and talking casually on her cell phone, almost become a stain on F and 10th. Like I said, she was jaywalking, but the black SUV that almost mowed her down purposely SPED UP to scare her. It seemed, to our eyes, that she just barely jumped out of the way, and I think the entire block froze as the SUV closed in on her. It took us a moment unfreeze once we saw she was still intact.

Now, there was plenty of blame to go around, but had she been hit, hurt or killed, I would be willing to testify that the black SUV’s actions were malicious and intentional—and the driver was going way above downtown speed limits, too. I don’t care how stupid a pedestrian is being, trying to scare them to make a point could land your ass in jail, so don’t do it, okay? I say this as a pedestrian who tries very hard to be alert and a driver who’s very aware of pedestrians (unlike most Metro D.C. drivers).

But, this woman was either completely oblivious to the recent danger or in shock. As IP and I passed her, she was still jabbering on her phone at her friend, talking about some situation with a mutual friend. “Lady,” IP said to me, “whatever personal drama you have going on really, really pales in comparison to the fact that you just ALMOST DIED.”

Truth, yo.

And so, after witnessing a pretty scary moment, the evening began in which we discussed an upcoming change for IP, my struggles to leave my current job, a friend who had a recent scare with her kid (and this, I say as someone who is usually flip about kid stories, was the kind of thing you can’t be flip about—it was damn scary, and I’m glad all is well), marveled over our first year of marriage and enjoyed some downtime together. We got silly tipsy (okay, he was tipsy, I was drunk), ate Southwest egg rolls, fries and pizza, and had the Summerbrau seasonal beer until they ran out and it was time for Golden Export once again. We lived, laughed, loved! I topped the evening off by laughingly sending an ill-advised friend request on Facebook that IP and I then ended up betting on: add or ignore? I would say what’s on the line, but I confess that I forgot.

When we got to Silver Spring, the traffic lights were still out at East-West Highway and Colesville; we held our breaths during the walk home, hoping that we wouldn’t have to deal with another outage from the storms that had passed through earlier yesterday. Luckily enough our place was fine. And we walked away with a well-played evening in which we celebrated, reminisced and plotted. Then IP made me drink lots and lots of water.

I love playing hooky and getting drunk with my husband.