I’ve never really felt for narcoleptics until recently. Last night to be exact.
After a Wednesday night show at the 9:30 Club, I began my voyage home. Robert Earl Keen tunes still echoed in my head, and I now, more than ever, miss Texas. It didn’t help that the concert venue smelled like home made biscuits-the kind my mom used to make. I’m not sure why this familiar scent was present last night, but my guess is REK wanted to give the DC club at Texas vibe.
I didn’t realize how late it had gotten by the time the concert ended, we finished our brews and Cari and I got REK’s autograph-that’s right!-but apparently it was borderline Wednesday night/Thursday morn’. All the while walking to the metro I contemplated which combinations of public transit I was going to take home.
My options included:
-Take the green/yellow line a couple stops to Gallery Pl-Chinatown then hop on the Circulator to Glover Park
-Take the green/yellow line to Gallery Pl-Chinatown, transfer to the Red Line and get off at Farragut North, then catch either the Circulator or 30s bus to GP
As the train approached the platform I realized it was the last one of the night. I wasn’t sure what that meant for my connection, specifically would I make the last Red Line train, but I decided I’d chance it. Luckily, I made the connection, but my luck quickly changed. I guess just to be sure everyone makes the last train and nobody gets left inside the train station, the trains park for a while at the platforms. Between the heated train at a complete stand still, my sleepiness, the brews we threw back before, during and after the show, and the Texas-shaped hole in my heart, I sort of fell asleep. Except, not sort of, I did.
So all the planning and figuring out how I was going to go home was no longer helpful when I woke up at the Woodley Park metro station. Fortunately, though, I’m familiar with the area from summer shenanigans. The only problem was there were no more trains to take me back to where I came from, so I had to walk to Dupont Circle to catch the D2 bus, which I was praying was still running.
I made it to the stop just as the next to last bus was driving off. The final bus as it turned out, didn’t come for another 20 minutes. So, naturally, I called EA-the best listener in the world-and we reminisced about our little blue house and determined a future roommate sitch is definitely in order. When the final bus came, I boarded and was on my way home. EA demanded we hang up and I talk to the boy on the bus with the same “9:30″ hand stamp as me, because she wanted something interesting to happen so I could blog about it. I complied, but the excessively hot bus put me to sleep before I could holler at him. I think by this time it was around 12:45 a.m. so I didn’t feel so lame falling asleep, twice.
I was wearing these new pants my mom bought me, essentially because I wanted to wear my cowgirl boots to the concert, which meant I had to wear them to work because there was no time to go home and change, and if I wore the dressy pants I could get away with wearing the boots to work and still look professional. The only thing is that the pants are slick and so are the leather seats on the bus. So when the bus turned the sharp corner onto my street (but I didn’t know it was my street because I was asleep) I sort of slided off the seat, thus waking up just in time to get off the bus and go home.
I’m so fortunate that between the laws of gravity and some other freak chances, I made it home in one piece. But this makes me wonder about narcoleptics and what happens if they fall asleep on the metro and miss their stop? Hopefully they’re not punctual people to begin with so others don’t think much of it when they’re late for dates.
