Eleven Things I Learned About Myself and D.C. After I Moved Here
Eleven Things I Learned About Myself and D.C. After I Moved Here
1) D.C. gets up late. I don’t answer the phone before 9:00am, and I would never dream of calling someone that early. I understand suburban families with toddlers wake up at 5:45am ON THE WEEKEND and go to their fancy grocery stores and Target before I’m out of bed. That is unacceptable. In D.C., “morning” starts at a civilized time.
2) D.C. walks a lot. Partly, that’s because it’s a pain and costly to park a car. Also, the Metro isn’t exactly extensive. It certainly can’t keep up with D.C.’s dynamism and neighborhoods in a constant state of flux. Walking is fun though. And it provides a great opportunity to view D.C.’s schizophrenic architecture built up one layer at a time for the last 200 years. And flowers.
3) I have a “tolerate-the-heat-and-humidity” gene. It kicked in about a year after I moved to D.C. I had to help it along though. To start, I accepted the pure awesomeness of a D.C. summer. Then, I learned to line the insides of my clothes with paper towels. And finally, I had to slow down a little to a long-stride walk that achieved a nice balance between sweating and a breeze. I moved to D.C. with a well-exercised freezing-winter-weather gene. That gene has disappeared from my person. I am now a BIG BABY about the cold.
4) I love learning about history and random parts of other people’s cultures. In D.C., I’m surrounded by both, and I gorge on it. Other D.C. residents make that easy by being smart and having a lot of interests they want to share. I have thousands of ways to learn about history and culture – from government and private sector-run programs to non-profits and neighborhood interests groups. There’s free stuff like the D.C. Public Library’s constant stream speakers and programs. Every day, an author somewhere in D.C. is talking at a book store or a school or a coffee shop about something they wrote I might be interested in. If I feel like spending money, I’ll find a Smithsonian Resident Associates event or something that National Geographic is hosting. And of course, the offerings are endless from the Smithsonian, the National Gallery of Art, and the dozens of free and paid museum across the city. Eating out means taking in history and culture, too right?
5) D.C. is an expensive town when I’m not focused on doing free stuff. The first time I saw a $16 cocktail on a menu, I wasn’t tipsy enough to actually buy it. Apparently, D.C. is the most expensive place to raise a family, and the 5th most expensive place to live in the United States. For a long time after I moved to D.C., I had to actively avoid thinking about how my grocery bill used to be literally 25% lower. But I learned a lot from the part-time job I had to find to pay my bills because my full-time salary wouldn’t cover them. Fact: dinner and drinks at home with your writer friends are much cheaper than going out.
6) The glass shards in the gutter are from car windows being punched in so that something potentially awesome can be stolen from my front seat, back seat, trunk, etc. In a nod to D.C. metropolitan area egalitarianism, thieves violated my car in D.C. (purse stolen from the trunk, and my favorite glasses were lost!) and in Arlington, Virginia (installed cd player ripped from the console), and in Gaithersburg, Maryland (passenger side rear tire stolen, but on the upside, my reaction to the theft is one of my favorite stories to tell).
7) I really like giving directions to people who need them. At any given moment within half a mile of the National Mall, twenty-five percent of people are disoriented or slightly lost. They all have the same look on their faces, it’s just deeper for the people who got off on a Southwest Metro stop instead of a Northwest one. I’ve learned to approach only the people who look like they would appreciate the help.
8) It’s nearly impossible not to volunteer for at least three activities. The level of community engagement, whether in a close-knit quadrant like Southwest or elsewhere, is quite shocking. I’ve been pressured nearly constantly since I moved here to join clubs and boards and fund-raising groups or just come to events at which the last plea will be for me to join! People in D.C. are passionate about their volunteer jobs, so much so that they sometimes get shouty in meetings. I try not to be put off by that. One day I might be them and particularly concerned that someone wasn’t taking seriously enough my perspective on President Chester A. Arthur’s attempts to make merit-based job selections at the New York Custom House in the late 1800s.
9) Every two years, D.C. calls it citizens without felony convictions to jury duty. That’s every two years. On. The. Dot. Six times so far!
10) My skills at resisting pressure to volunteer are put to good use around the entrepreneurial panhandlers who flock to Metro station exits at tourist locations. With the right shoes and backpack and look in my eye, the businessmen willing to trade directions for a dollar or two generally understand I’m from D.C., too. But on the days I don’t quite have the right look, (do they not know I’ve rescued hundreds from the L’Enfant Plaza Metro exit abyss?!?) and a service provider turns toward me, I just smile a little and shake my head. It always works. I like to think they respect the fact I haven’t harmed any of their business with paying customers.
11) I can say “How y’all doin'” properly in D.C, the southernmost Northern city. “How y’all doin'” is a statement. Not a question. “Y’all” is one syllable. No hidden vowels should be inserted and pronounced. When I say “How y’all doin'” properly, my neighbors nod and wish me a good day even if I don’t know their faces or their names. Sometimes, they will comment on the beautiful weather or the flowers or the trees in bloom. I always smile because I know how lucky I am to live in the littlest big city in the United States.
Andrea M. Pawley 