Black Rhombus

OK, so on my way to work this morning, there was a huge, adolescent (still a bit gray around the edges) mute swan (thanks Tammy) smack in the middle of the road. There were a couple of people there, helping to direct traffic around the poor thing. It was seriously enormous, though; I think its head was about even with the peoples’ shoulders. Six cars, including me, had to go around the “little” guy. He was obviously very confused. Tammy (out for her run) said that the swan had been successfully coaxed out of the road by the time she’d gone by, & that it was trying to navigate the railing on the boardwalk to get to the river (& having an equally difficult time).

Matty, on the other hand, had a completely different morning ride to work:

“Some 45 year old doofus-looking white dude passed out on the metro right at the takoma park stop. This woman was trying to call the train operator and she was an idiot so I had to point out where the call button was. Meanwhile the dude gets up and everyone was asking the guy if he was okay. he’s all “i’m fine, i just felt a little sick.” He’s like kind of adjusting himself and turning around . . . kind of trying to find a corner to hide in a little and become anonymous.

“Very quickly the car starts to fill with a horrible stench. Within a minute it smells as if we’re trapped in the diaper of a baby that someone’s been feeding Indian food to for a week. I mean people are gagging. All the while the guy is still fidgeting and adjusting himself and apologizing “I’m sorry. i shouldn’t have gotten on the metro. I’m sorry.” and you can see the back of his pants are glistening. It looked like someone pulled open the back of his pants and dumped a whole pot of stew down there.

“So we’re all about to start breaking windows on the train to get some air in there, but at the same time everyone’s trying to pretend like they don’t know what happened because obviously the dude is going to go shoot himself in the face later. I mean he’s a 45 year old man standing in the middle of a metro car in rush hour with his own feces running down his legs and everyone knows it. but the car is taking what seems like 10 minutes to get to the next stop. So we’re all trapped in this awkward purgatory.

“Finally we get to the stop and he gets off and we tell the train operator that the dude is fine and got off the train. That smell will haunt me for a while though.”

I think that if it came down to: developmentally-challenged mute swan, or 45yr old father of three passing out & pooping himself, the geezer gets it; hands-down.