How to be a tourist in your own city

Overheard (or witnessed) in DC (and environs)

DCist runs a weekly feature of overheard talk. Like the Metropolitan Diary in the Monday New York Times or Stan Mack's Real Life Funnies that years ago ran in Adweek magazine ("all dialogue guaranteed to be overheard"). I avidly read such features.

Last night I was in College Park.

Woman 1 with Woman 2 and two Guys:

"We don't need to find the party. We are! the party!"

I smiled, kind of laughed. "See, he thinks so [that we're the party]!"

Guy: "Who does?"

Woman 1: "That guy back there."

At least she didn't say old guy.

That was after a car pulled over to the curb and stopped and the woman passenger asked me a question by the UMD South Commons dorms. I figured they were gonna ask me for directions and they were SOL because I was where I was because I didn't know how to get around the campus...

"Excuse me, is the word 'egotist' or 'egoist'?

My response: "Actually, it's two different words. Egotist or egotistical means that you think you're the s***..."

While I started talking about 'egoists,' she smiled and was already talking-gesticulating at the driver, probably her boyfriend.

Of course, then there was the experience on the subway. A bunch of students probably from Catholic U got on the subway at Brookland. At the NY Avenue station one rushed up, started vomiting onto the platform. A friend joined them, somehow they got disengaged from the train, and the rest of the group was in hysterics, although embarrassed.

One of the guys said: "But we didn't even finish the gallon of wine."

I said, but none of the rest of you seem drunk. "Oh it was just me and him... He's 'Spoke', that's what we do."

The women apologized for their behavior...

Index Keywords: tourism