Dear Anne Frank ,

People watching on the metro is amazing. Everyone should try it at least once.

There was this younger girl on our first ride that looked like she had walked out of “In the Heights” musical. Out of the corner of my I could see her twirling her hair and lip singing, possibly to something she was looking over in the pamphlet in her hand.

There was this Asian couple that shared ear-buds to an iPod. They reminded me of the Asian couple on Secret Life of the American Teenager. I wondered if they were the clone couple.

When the metro was packed, there was this 40ish year old guy dressed really nice standing up in the center in front of us. He looked important and I wondered if he was. He looked mighty familiar.

On one of the rides, when it was our turn to stand up because it was full, we stood behind this guy that was working on his Mac. He was probably a student. He had closed out of one of his programs and I almost shit seeing his desktop all a mess with icons everywhere, even worse than mine.

We also stood by this African American woman that had a broken arm. She had three kids, two sitting with her and one across the way. The little girl was wanting to sleep and she kept yelling at her, telling her not to sleep on the metro. I can imagine with that small of kids, it’d be nerve wrecking to have on the metro with that many people, let alone by herself.

On the last ride back, there was this mother with three kids and a grandmother. I wondered what their story was because they seemed like odd folks, but generally happy and friendly. I wondered if their dad was in their lives by the way the boy was sort of acting up. They also had disposable cameras. Who uses those anymore? I thought disposable cameras were extinct by now!

On that same ride, there was this white guy with a black girl standing in front of us holding on to the center pole. From the way they were talking and never once took their eyes off each other, you could just tell they were in love. This huge cloud of amazing aura was ringing around them.

There was also this elderly woman who was by herself. It looked like she had a few groceries in the cloth bags that she was carrying. When she got off at one of the stops,  she hopped off the metro like she does it quite often.

I “studied” tons more people but that’s the ones I took mental notes of the most. Just something about each one of them, all of the families or individuals or stories being different.

The whole time I was wondering what each person did and how they play a part in America. At one point, of each ride,  my mind kept going back to this scene in Rent. The one where the group was on the train singing “Santa Fe.” 

Several times throughout our ride today… There were times where the metro was so full that everyone was huddled together. I smiled to myself, thinking, this IS America. There are all kinds of people with all kinds of differences and likes, packed together, not minding and stuck in their own conversations in their own life while around complete strangers.

This is America. And, above all, I simply love the diversity.

Your friend,
Karen-Maeby