Yesterday I successfully navigated the Metro and streets of DC all by myself (unless you count the one phone call to Matt). I walked to the Metro and successfully took it to the Metrocenter stop. I got off on the wrong side, but that didn’t detract from the pride I felt in my autonomy. I did some shopping then walked my purchases to the Museum of Natural History. I felt very DC-resident-ish when I arrived at the museum by myself amidst all the groups of tourists and went through the security check-in with my shopping bag. As the tourists talked excitedly with each other about the amazing variety of our ocean life, I nonchalantly mused over the exhibits, my bag slung over my shoulder in a very offhandish way. Then I walked about a mile through the city to Matt’s apartment, had dinner at a restaurant (founded by an Iraqi-American artist, activist and “restaurateur”) that pays tribute to Langston Hughes and other American poets, took the Metro back to Tenleytown, and walked home.
This morning I walked to Starbucks and ordered a Café Americano. I sat outside with my sophisticated choice and watched the old handicapped man with the Sherlock Holmes hat smoke the Sherlock Holmes pipe, smiled at the dogs that owners left out front (leashes hooked on the gate) while they went inside to get their coffees, and listened to two old men and a lady behind me converse about politics, utilizing fancy ivory-tower words with the same familiarly as the F-bomb. I felt very “in.”
A few times this past week, I have thought of that Simpsons episode where Lisa masquerades as a college student and ends up in a coffee bar / bookstore. She is all excited but trying not to seem so, and in her head she says with glee “there’s a cat on the table and nobody cares!” That’s me all over. I find myself feeling all cosmopolitan with my new activities, but also like a child who reads what she wrote in her diary last week and decides that she’s “so much more grown up now.” Because really, what truly cosmopolitan woman feels pride in using the subway successfully (especially when she ends up getting confused into taking an escalator down and then immediately back up because she went the wrong way), acts nonchalant on purpose, wonders how to pronounce “Café Americano,” and then goes home to blog about it? (Also, what cosmopolitan woman feels slightly like a fraud when referring to herself as a “woman” instead of a “girl”?)
And if it’s really not a big deal to see a dog left outside a Starbucks sitting next to an old man with a pipe and a funny hat, then why take pictures?
