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Rally For Sanity
I have now uploaded pictures of the signs I prepared for the rally to flickr. You can see them here, in order. Also included are a couple of shots of how I attached them to the back of my knapsack. The bracelets say "CAUGHT DOING GOOD." Unfortunately, the set-up pictured broke when I tried to sling it over my shoulder, so I restrung it with three separate loops rather than one long one.
On a completely unrelated side note, my aunt's bathroom is a Green Lantern.
You can see my pics from the rally here.
Additionally, there's a picture of Capitol Hill, a piano belonging to "The Capitol Hillbillies", and the Library of Congress. I took that last picture not just because it's cool, but because the Library now has an archive of every public tweet ever. That's just... surreal.
Anyway!
I left a little after 9am. A little later than I'd wanted, since I'd been planning on beating the traffic and getting some time at the Smithsonian, but not bad. Unfortunately, the nearest Metro station was closed. It's deep underground and the elevators were out. So they bussed us to the next station down the line.
Even at that hour, the Metro was, ironically, insane. When I got there, the platform was crowded:
Even though we were nearly at the end of the line, and even though it was only 10am, the trains coming in were also crowded. I just missed fitting on the first train that came in, and had to wait for the next. That one was standing room only. There was no room to let people on at any of the next several stops. Fortunately, I found a corner in the back where I could lean against the wall and have a little space.
Unfortunately, I had to transfer to a different train to get to the rally, and that was only a couple of stops away from the Mall. The platform was, of course, crowded. And there was, of course, no room on the first train. Again, I just missed getting on. So I waited for the next one. When it came, I had the craziest (in a bad way) few minutes of the day.
The crowd pressed in. There was a woman standing just inside the car, holding an infant to her chest. She was screaming out to the crowd not to push her. I pressed back against the crowd as much as I could, but I was being shoved forward. The car filled up. I was stuck halfway in the door, halfway out, with no way to move. The doors started closing. Suddenly, I found myself (mostly) inside the car. I squeezed the rest of the way in. The doors closed behind me. But then they reopened. Something was pressing against them. (I was pretty sure it wasn't me, but others seemed to think it was. Then again, they'd also seemed to think I was responsible for crushing the woman with the baby.) Still, I thought it'd be okay. And I didn't want to deal with that crowd again. So I stayed where I was. The guy next to me got frustrated and stepped out. I shifted a bit. And then two women squeezed in where he'd been standing, to a chorus of boos and complaints. But... the doors shut. And stayed shut. We were underway.
There was, of course, a huge crowd at the Smithsonian Metro station. There was also a large painting on the floor of the station, near the exit, with the rally logo.
By then, it was past 11. Two hours since I'd left my aunt's house. People were lined up along the pathway, showing off their signs, greeting fellow rallygoers, taking pictures, and handing out flyers.
The crowd moved in an endless flow across the length of the Mall. I crossed Seventh Street... and that was as far as I could get. I ended up stuck in front of a large, then-empty tent. It was the Family Reunification tent, where lost kids were supposed to meet up with their parents. It was set up just outside the rally's designated area. They hadn't expected to fill it up. They hadn't been prepared for more.
If you look at this picture, you can see a comparison of the size of this rally versus Glenn Beck's rally this past summer. See that area where the fork begins? That's where I was. Where the rally was supposed to end. That turned out to be a third of the length, not counting the people who gathered around the sides, sat on the steps of the museums, climbed onto the tops of the port-a-potties, or wandered off to watch it on TV because there just wasn't enough room.
There's a good shot taken from space here. (Yes, from space. By a satellite.)
So, I was stuck behind the tent. So were a lot of people. Many of whom tried to get around it or through it until the woman in charge of the tent chased them off. It was her job to keep the tent clear for its actual purpose - lost children. (And they did show up over the next few hours, though I don't know how they managed to get there through the crowd.) Later, a police officer arrived to bolster her authority.
Some of the people near me tried to raise the sides of the tent. They even offered to construct a barricade so people would still respect its interior. At least, with the sides rolled up, we'd be able to see through to the rally stage (the jumbotrons to the sides of it, anyway). Alas, despite the calls for reasonableness, it wasn't to be. There was much booing. Finally, we reached a compromise - we took down the clips holding up the corner (allowing a few more people to see around the side) but left up the rest. Except that later, the police officer put even that back up, after other people pushing things used up his patience.
Fortunately, the front of the tent had tables set up, so I at least had a place to put my backpack.
Standing near me was Waldo. So if you were wondering how to find me in the crowd, all you have to do is look through 215,000 people and find Waldo. I'm right near him. (One of them, anyway. I saw at least 8 people dressed as Waldo, and I think there were even a few more.)
When I went to open my backpack, someone behind me said, "Is that a Brass Rat?" Indeed, I do have an MIT class ring. And, it turned out, so did she. And the people she was with. What are the odds?
At one point, the police officer stepped over to our corner of the tent. He sniffed the air. He smelled pot. He was not happy. He got up on the table in front of me and shouted out to the crowd. His job was to protect the kids in the tent. Put out the weed, or else. There are children in the tent. Someone behind me told him that, for what it was worth, it had smelled like that for hours. (My sense of smell wasn't doing much that day. Every once in a while, it would pick up something that smelled like cheap, overly sweet wine. But I guess it was pot.) "You should have told me! I'd have called out the drug-sniffing dogs!"
Anyway... the show opened with the Mythbusters. I'm a huge fan, so being that close was really exciting. Even if I couldn't see them. Or the screens. And, for that matter, I could only hear them in bits and pieces, when the people near me were quiet. (The crowd kept chanting, "Louder! Louder! Louder!" and they did get the volume turned up a little. But the rally hadn't been set up for that many people. They didn't have speakers near us. Let alone another few blocks back.) It was a little disappointing, though. The Mythbusters had control of the crowd, but all they had us do was several iterations of The Wave and then a couple of attempts to get us to jump together. I'd hoped for better from them.
After that, the rally was mostly musical acts, which I could sometimes hear, and some bits with the casts of the two shows (Daily Show and Colbert Report), which I mostly couldn't hear.
That didn't matter so much. Sure, it would have been great to be closer in, where I could see and hear. But the best part of the whole thing was being part of the crowd. Being one of nearly a quarter of a million people squeezed into the mall just to be together and be reasonable. To enjoy the show and each other's company. To be a part of something big. To show that, while the loudest, craziest, most over-the-top people may get the media attention, the reasonable people really are the silent majority.
The other awesome thing about being part of the crowd, of course, was seeing what everyone else had done. The signs. The costumes. Even a full-scale replica of Lucy's "psychiatry" booth from Peanuts. Oh, and someone else came up to me specifically because he'd also worn a beanie copter to the event. (You ask me, too much sanity can be a dangerous thing...) We had a very cool moment of solidarity.
What wasn't so good about having that many people is that we completely overloaded the cell phone network. There was a strong signal, but you just couldn't make any calls. Which was especially rough inside the Family Reunification tent.
On the other hand, despite the size of the crowd, we left the grounds very clean. What little was left out, volunteers helped pick up. There were even extra garbage bags for when the trash cans filled up.
After the rally was over, I went to walk through the crowd for a while. My aunt (who was, to her great regret, out of town on the day of the rally) had arranged for me to try to meet a friend of hers. A coworker with whom she had gone on many business trips. I'd sent her a picture so she could recognize me, but the link she sent in return with pictures of her didn't work for me. I emailed her back, but she never responded. After the rally, I tried to call her, but of course the phones weren't working. Eventually, I managed to leave her a voice mail. At some point, she left one for me. That one told me that she was towards the middle of the Mall, sitting on a grassy area, with people around her. Some of the people near her had signs. And she was sitting on a purple yoga mat. Near the art museum. That was all. And it was not helpful. The entire Mall is grassy. The entire Mall was filled with people, and many of them had signs. I asked someone where the art museum was, and was told that, in fact, there are several along the Mall. Since I hadn't been to DC in well over a decade, I didn't recognize any of them. I called back and left a few more messages, to no avail.
At one point, while I had the phone to my ear, a guy stepped up about a foot away from me without a word and pointed a camera with a giant zoom lens at me. (Seriously, it was huge. And inches from my face.) I put the phone down (I wasn't getting through anyway) and turned to him. He told me that he just liked my hat and wanted a picture. Then he ran away. Weird. (Much nicer was when someone came up to flip through my signs and take pictures of them. Unfortunately, that was at lunchtime, and I had a mouth full of peanut butter crackers, so I didn't get to talk much.)
So I wandered around. Took in the sights. Enjoyed the crowd. Handed out a few cards for something I call the Smile Project. (No one emailed me or commented on the blog, though a couple of people did appreciate getting the cards.) An hour after the rally ended, I tried calling again. This time, she picked up. Took ten minutes for her to understand where I was and start me off in the right direction. I stayed on the phone with her until she recognized me (by the hat) and we managed to meet up. The purple yoga mat was very small. Also, there were people sitting on it. Also, they were on the side of the Mall, not in the middle. But we met. Then we hung around while she tried to get in touch with her niece (who, it turns out, had seen the size of the crowd and decided to nip off into one of the museums). We waited another half hour or so, which gave me time to look around some more, appreciate costumes and signs, and go greet the "Jump Rope With A Muslim" group.
By 5pm, we were all (woman, her husband, her sister-in-law, her niece, and I) together and heading out. Two hours after the rally's end, there were still plenty of people milling around. Just enjoying the day and the camaraderie and each other's signs.
We headed out for a nearby Chinese restaurant. And by "nearby" I mean up a long steep hill and over several blocks. I'd been on my feet without a place to sit since 10am. Oh, and the restaurant turned out to be up two flights of stairs. But I made it.
We got in, and the place was packed. Every table was full, and there was a line for take-out. The hostess told us to sit in the waiting area. Then she ran off. And didn't come back for half an hour. During which a large private party was seated in a back room. The staff looked harried. People gradually left, but we still weren't seated. The staff worked to clear the tables. We still weren't seated. A group of four walked in, just as things were starting to settle down. They were immediately waved over to a ready table. A few minutes later, we got a table, too. Someone came over to give us a pot of tea and two tea cups. For the five of us. By then, the other group had had their order taken. By the time someone came to take our order, they had their food. It was a little frustrating.
Still... the owner came over to take the order himself. He told us the person whose job it was to answer the phones had only just come in. Traffic had, of course, been impossible anywhere in the area. And things were usually quiet early on a Saturday night (let alone late afternoon, when the onslaught had started). They were clearly overwhelmed and understaffed.
I was seated across from my aunt's friend's sister-in-law. When someone at our table mentioned that hey, maybe they hadn't known about the rally and weren't prepared for it (clearly, no one was expecting the crowd that showed up), she loudly proclaimed that no, they were Chinese. They always know what's going on. They won't tell you, of course. They'll just go in back and spit in your food.
I... didn't know what to say to that. (And, by then, fatigue had seriously set in. The whole time at the table, I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. Probably because I hadn't been able to find any non-caffeinated drinks on Friday, and I've been off caffeine for the better part of the year.)
The conversation moved on. I added a few words here and there. Once our order was in, food came in a reasonable time. And it was good. We sat and we ate. We talked some more.
Woman across from me, who had taken some pride in being able to speak to the wait staff in their native Spanish, started talking about how, when she's at work (as a physical therapist), she gets patients who don't speak English. She gives them the critical information in Spanish, but for anything else, she refuses to speak anything but English. They live in this country now, and they should learn the language. That's how it was for immigrants of her generation, that's the way it should be. (Never mind that we don't have an official language in this country. For a reason.)
And then we waited for someone to come over with the bill. We weren't really waiting that long after we'd all finished eating, but the woman across from me was impatient. She said we should just leave. The other two in her generation were up for that. I most decidedly was not.
So they sat back down. The niece, in her 20s, told me that she now worked in the food service industry and was not comfortable walking, either - the chef still had to be paid, the cost of food covered, and she could tell the difference between a stressed staff who were having a bad day and lazy staff who just weren't doing their jobs.
Still, people getting their coats on did signal the owners that we were ready to leave. The hostess came over to tally our bills. Woman across from me denied that she had ordered or received the spring rolls she'd eaten. (Just to mess with her head. She messed with mine, so I'll mess with hers.) Then she packed up her leftovers in the empty box that had been sitting on the table when we arrived. (The rest of us didn't wait for more boxes. I'd have liked to pack up mine, but I had no place for it. Aunt and uncle are vegetarians.) Then, while the rest of us lined up to pay our checks... she walked out.
We walked to the nearest Metro station. Took it two stops to the transfer station (from whence we were going in opposite directions). I got a big, warm hug from my aunt's friend. (She's very nice, all else aside.) Her husband thanked me for keeping them honest. We parted ways. Somehow, I managed to make it back. Luckily, the station where I'd left the car was working again. And I walked through the parking lot with a warm and cordial middle-aged couple. (On the way out of the station, I passed someone going to a Halloween party in a Doctor Horrible costume so good I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't really NPH.) Drove home, hit the sack.
The next day, I got to visit with my aunt and uncle, and my cousin even came down for the day. So that was nice. And relaxing.
All in all, it was an amazing experience. I'm not sure what long-term significance it'll really have, but it felt historic. More, though - much more, it felt... fun. Congenial. One reporter said that though she'd been to many rallies and protests over the years, this one, overwhelmingly, felt like it had a real sense of community. In a way that others didn't. I'm not much of a rally-goer, but that, to me, sounds (and feels) right.
Sure, if I'd stayed at home, I could have watched it all from the comfort of my couch. Sat down, adjusted the volume as I pleased, gotten a clear view of everything on stage. That's what a DC resident I know ended up doing, and that would have been entirely reasonable. But I'd probably have ended up wandering off or changing the channel. The stuff on stage (between the musical acts) was good, but not great. And, really, it wasn't the point. A quarter of a million people (most of whom could neither hear nor see what was happening on stage) hadn't gathered to listen to music and some comedy bits. They'd come to be together. To be part of it. To be a call for rationality in the face of all the crazy extremism in our politics and culture.
I'll probably never see any of them again, but for that one afternoon, disparate as we were, we were one big friendly community. And I am so glad that I was a part of it.
On a completely unrelated side note, my aunt's bathroom is a Green Lantern.
You can see my pics from the rally here.
Additionally, there's a picture of Capitol Hill, a piano belonging to "The Capitol Hillbillies", and the Library of Congress. I took that last picture not just because it's cool, but because the Library now has an archive of every public tweet ever. That's just... surreal.
Anyway!
I left a little after 9am. A little later than I'd wanted, since I'd been planning on beating the traffic and getting some time at the Smithsonian, but not bad. Unfortunately, the nearest Metro station was closed. It's deep underground and the elevators were out. So they bussed us to the next station down the line.
Even at that hour, the Metro was, ironically, insane. When I got there, the platform was crowded:
Even though we were nearly at the end of the line, and even though it was only 10am, the trains coming in were also crowded. I just missed fitting on the first train that came in, and had to wait for the next. That one was standing room only. There was no room to let people on at any of the next several stops. Fortunately, I found a corner in the back where I could lean against the wall and have a little space.
Unfortunately, I had to transfer to a different train to get to the rally, and that was only a couple of stops away from the Mall. The platform was, of course, crowded. And there was, of course, no room on the first train. Again, I just missed getting on. So I waited for the next one. When it came, I had the craziest (in a bad way) few minutes of the day.
The crowd pressed in. There was a woman standing just inside the car, holding an infant to her chest. She was screaming out to the crowd not to push her. I pressed back against the crowd as much as I could, but I was being shoved forward. The car filled up. I was stuck halfway in the door, halfway out, with no way to move. The doors started closing. Suddenly, I found myself (mostly) inside the car. I squeezed the rest of the way in. The doors closed behind me. But then they reopened. Something was pressing against them. (I was pretty sure it wasn't me, but others seemed to think it was. Then again, they'd also seemed to think I was responsible for crushing the woman with the baby.) Still, I thought it'd be okay. And I didn't want to deal with that crowd again. So I stayed where I was. The guy next to me got frustrated and stepped out. I shifted a bit. And then two women squeezed in where he'd been standing, to a chorus of boos and complaints. But... the doors shut. And stayed shut. We were underway.
There was, of course, a huge crowd at the Smithsonian Metro station. There was also a large painting on the floor of the station, near the exit, with the rally logo.
By then, it was past 11. Two hours since I'd left my aunt's house. People were lined up along the pathway, showing off their signs, greeting fellow rallygoers, taking pictures, and handing out flyers.
The crowd moved in an endless flow across the length of the Mall. I crossed Seventh Street... and that was as far as I could get. I ended up stuck in front of a large, then-empty tent. It was the Family Reunification tent, where lost kids were supposed to meet up with their parents. It was set up just outside the rally's designated area. They hadn't expected to fill it up. They hadn't been prepared for more.
If you look at this picture, you can see a comparison of the size of this rally versus Glenn Beck's rally this past summer. See that area where the fork begins? That's where I was. Where the rally was supposed to end. That turned out to be a third of the length, not counting the people who gathered around the sides, sat on the steps of the museums, climbed onto the tops of the port-a-potties, or wandered off to watch it on TV because there just wasn't enough room.
There's a good shot taken from space here. (Yes, from space. By a satellite.)
So, I was stuck behind the tent. So were a lot of people. Many of whom tried to get around it or through it until the woman in charge of the tent chased them off. It was her job to keep the tent clear for its actual purpose - lost children. (And they did show up over the next few hours, though I don't know how they managed to get there through the crowd.) Later, a police officer arrived to bolster her authority.
Some of the people near me tried to raise the sides of the tent. They even offered to construct a barricade so people would still respect its interior. At least, with the sides rolled up, we'd be able to see through to the rally stage (the jumbotrons to the sides of it, anyway). Alas, despite the calls for reasonableness, it wasn't to be. There was much booing. Finally, we reached a compromise - we took down the clips holding up the corner (allowing a few more people to see around the side) but left up the rest. Except that later, the police officer put even that back up, after other people pushing things used up his patience.
Fortunately, the front of the tent had tables set up, so I at least had a place to put my backpack.
Standing near me was Waldo. So if you were wondering how to find me in the crowd, all you have to do is look through 215,000 people and find Waldo. I'm right near him. (One of them, anyway. I saw at least 8 people dressed as Waldo, and I think there were even a few more.)
When I went to open my backpack, someone behind me said, "Is that a Brass Rat?" Indeed, I do have an MIT class ring. And, it turned out, so did she. And the people she was with. What are the odds?
At one point, the police officer stepped over to our corner of the tent. He sniffed the air. He smelled pot. He was not happy. He got up on the table in front of me and shouted out to the crowd. His job was to protect the kids in the tent. Put out the weed, or else. There are children in the tent. Someone behind me told him that, for what it was worth, it had smelled like that for hours. (My sense of smell wasn't doing much that day. Every once in a while, it would pick up something that smelled like cheap, overly sweet wine. But I guess it was pot.) "You should have told me! I'd have called out the drug-sniffing dogs!"
Anyway... the show opened with the Mythbusters. I'm a huge fan, so being that close was really exciting. Even if I couldn't see them. Or the screens. And, for that matter, I could only hear them in bits and pieces, when the people near me were quiet. (The crowd kept chanting, "Louder! Louder! Louder!" and they did get the volume turned up a little. But the rally hadn't been set up for that many people. They didn't have speakers near us. Let alone another few blocks back.) It was a little disappointing, though. The Mythbusters had control of the crowd, but all they had us do was several iterations of The Wave and then a couple of attempts to get us to jump together. I'd hoped for better from them.
After that, the rally was mostly musical acts, which I could sometimes hear, and some bits with the casts of the two shows (Daily Show and Colbert Report), which I mostly couldn't hear.
That didn't matter so much. Sure, it would have been great to be closer in, where I could see and hear. But the best part of the whole thing was being part of the crowd. Being one of nearly a quarter of a million people squeezed into the mall just to be together and be reasonable. To enjoy the show and each other's company. To be a part of something big. To show that, while the loudest, craziest, most over-the-top people may get the media attention, the reasonable people really are the silent majority.
The other awesome thing about being part of the crowd, of course, was seeing what everyone else had done. The signs. The costumes. Even a full-scale replica of Lucy's "psychiatry" booth from Peanuts. Oh, and someone else came up to me specifically because he'd also worn a beanie copter to the event. (You ask me, too much sanity can be a dangerous thing...) We had a very cool moment of solidarity.
What wasn't so good about having that many people is that we completely overloaded the cell phone network. There was a strong signal, but you just couldn't make any calls. Which was especially rough inside the Family Reunification tent.
On the other hand, despite the size of the crowd, we left the grounds very clean. What little was left out, volunteers helped pick up. There were even extra garbage bags for when the trash cans filled up.
After the rally was over, I went to walk through the crowd for a while. My aunt (who was, to her great regret, out of town on the day of the rally) had arranged for me to try to meet a friend of hers. A coworker with whom she had gone on many business trips. I'd sent her a picture so she could recognize me, but the link she sent in return with pictures of her didn't work for me. I emailed her back, but she never responded. After the rally, I tried to call her, but of course the phones weren't working. Eventually, I managed to leave her a voice mail. At some point, she left one for me. That one told me that she was towards the middle of the Mall, sitting on a grassy area, with people around her. Some of the people near her had signs. And she was sitting on a purple yoga mat. Near the art museum. That was all. And it was not helpful. The entire Mall is grassy. The entire Mall was filled with people, and many of them had signs. I asked someone where the art museum was, and was told that, in fact, there are several along the Mall. Since I hadn't been to DC in well over a decade, I didn't recognize any of them. I called back and left a few more messages, to no avail.
At one point, while I had the phone to my ear, a guy stepped up about a foot away from me without a word and pointed a camera with a giant zoom lens at me. (Seriously, it was huge. And inches from my face.) I put the phone down (I wasn't getting through anyway) and turned to him. He told me that he just liked my hat and wanted a picture. Then he ran away. Weird. (Much nicer was when someone came up to flip through my signs and take pictures of them. Unfortunately, that was at lunchtime, and I had a mouth full of peanut butter crackers, so I didn't get to talk much.)
So I wandered around. Took in the sights. Enjoyed the crowd. Handed out a few cards for something I call the Smile Project. (No one emailed me or commented on the blog, though a couple of people did appreciate getting the cards.) An hour after the rally ended, I tried calling again. This time, she picked up. Took ten minutes for her to understand where I was and start me off in the right direction. I stayed on the phone with her until she recognized me (by the hat) and we managed to meet up. The purple yoga mat was very small. Also, there were people sitting on it. Also, they were on the side of the Mall, not in the middle. But we met. Then we hung around while she tried to get in touch with her niece (who, it turns out, had seen the size of the crowd and decided to nip off into one of the museums). We waited another half hour or so, which gave me time to look around some more, appreciate costumes and signs, and go greet the "Jump Rope With A Muslim" group.
By 5pm, we were all (woman, her husband, her sister-in-law, her niece, and I) together and heading out. Two hours after the rally's end, there were still plenty of people milling around. Just enjoying the day and the camaraderie and each other's signs.
We headed out for a nearby Chinese restaurant. And by "nearby" I mean up a long steep hill and over several blocks. I'd been on my feet without a place to sit since 10am. Oh, and the restaurant turned out to be up two flights of stairs. But I made it.
We got in, and the place was packed. Every table was full, and there was a line for take-out. The hostess told us to sit in the waiting area. Then she ran off. And didn't come back for half an hour. During which a large private party was seated in a back room. The staff looked harried. People gradually left, but we still weren't seated. The staff worked to clear the tables. We still weren't seated. A group of four walked in, just as things were starting to settle down. They were immediately waved over to a ready table. A few minutes later, we got a table, too. Someone came over to give us a pot of tea and two tea cups. For the five of us. By then, the other group had had their order taken. By the time someone came to take our order, they had their food. It was a little frustrating.
Still... the owner came over to take the order himself. He told us the person whose job it was to answer the phones had only just come in. Traffic had, of course, been impossible anywhere in the area. And things were usually quiet early on a Saturday night (let alone late afternoon, when the onslaught had started). They were clearly overwhelmed and understaffed.
I was seated across from my aunt's friend's sister-in-law. When someone at our table mentioned that hey, maybe they hadn't known about the rally and weren't prepared for it (clearly, no one was expecting the crowd that showed up), she loudly proclaimed that no, they were Chinese. They always know what's going on. They won't tell you, of course. They'll just go in back and spit in your food.
I... didn't know what to say to that. (And, by then, fatigue had seriously set in. The whole time at the table, I was struggling to keep my eyes open. I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. Probably because I hadn't been able to find any non-caffeinated drinks on Friday, and I've been off caffeine for the better part of the year.)
The conversation moved on. I added a few words here and there. Once our order was in, food came in a reasonable time. And it was good. We sat and we ate. We talked some more.
Woman across from me, who had taken some pride in being able to speak to the wait staff in their native Spanish, started talking about how, when she's at work (as a physical therapist), she gets patients who don't speak English. She gives them the critical information in Spanish, but for anything else, she refuses to speak anything but English. They live in this country now, and they should learn the language. That's how it was for immigrants of her generation, that's the way it should be. (Never mind that we don't have an official language in this country. For a reason.)
And then we waited for someone to come over with the bill. We weren't really waiting that long after we'd all finished eating, but the woman across from me was impatient. She said we should just leave. The other two in her generation were up for that. I most decidedly was not.
So they sat back down. The niece, in her 20s, told me that she now worked in the food service industry and was not comfortable walking, either - the chef still had to be paid, the cost of food covered, and she could tell the difference between a stressed staff who were having a bad day and lazy staff who just weren't doing their jobs.
Still, people getting their coats on did signal the owners that we were ready to leave. The hostess came over to tally our bills. Woman across from me denied that she had ordered or received the spring rolls she'd eaten. (Just to mess with her head. She messed with mine, so I'll mess with hers.) Then she packed up her leftovers in the empty box that had been sitting on the table when we arrived. (The rest of us didn't wait for more boxes. I'd have liked to pack up mine, but I had no place for it. Aunt and uncle are vegetarians.) Then, while the rest of us lined up to pay our checks... she walked out.
We walked to the nearest Metro station. Took it two stops to the transfer station (from whence we were going in opposite directions). I got a big, warm hug from my aunt's friend. (She's very nice, all else aside.) Her husband thanked me for keeping them honest. We parted ways. Somehow, I managed to make it back. Luckily, the station where I'd left the car was working again. And I walked through the parking lot with a warm and cordial middle-aged couple. (On the way out of the station, I passed someone going to a Halloween party in a Doctor Horrible costume so good I had to look twice to make sure it wasn't really NPH.) Drove home, hit the sack.
The next day, I got to visit with my aunt and uncle, and my cousin even came down for the day. So that was nice. And relaxing.
All in all, it was an amazing experience. I'm not sure what long-term significance it'll really have, but it felt historic. More, though - much more, it felt... fun. Congenial. One reporter said that though she'd been to many rallies and protests over the years, this one, overwhelmingly, felt like it had a real sense of community. In a way that others didn't. I'm not much of a rally-goer, but that, to me, sounds (and feels) right.
Sure, if I'd stayed at home, I could have watched it all from the comfort of my couch. Sat down, adjusted the volume as I pleased, gotten a clear view of everything on stage. That's what a DC resident I know ended up doing, and that would have been entirely reasonable. But I'd probably have ended up wandering off or changing the channel. The stuff on stage (between the musical acts) was good, but not great. And, really, it wasn't the point. A quarter of a million people (most of whom could neither hear nor see what was happening on stage) hadn't gathered to listen to music and some comedy bits. They'd come to be together. To be part of it. To be a call for rationality in the face of all the crazy extremism in our politics and culture.
I'll probably never see any of them again, but for that one afternoon, disparate as we were, we were one big friendly community. And I am so glad that I was a part of it.
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