I can’t believe it’s been a year…
3 minute read
June 5, 2005, 8:09 PM
I can’t believe it’s been a year since the June 5 anti-war demonstration sponsored by ANSWER Coalition. I can’t get over that it’s been that long.
Goodness… I remember that day like it was yesterday. I remember being excited, but a little bit nervous, since it would be my first time as a true participant, vs. the previous one where I’d stayed on the sidelines the whole time.
I wrote about the June 5 demonstration in the Journal back in June 2004, and it’s good reading. I still regret packing Big Mavica for that demonstration, as all the photos I took were taken with my cell phone. It was a good day temperature-wise, as the rain that fell that day cooled things off a bit.
After the march, I found myself near the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan station. I visited a nearby McDonald’s, where other participants in the march went afterwards, and I also helped out a girl who was in tears because she was stranded by her boyfriend in DC, hundreds of miles from home (she was from the Virginia Beach area). I provided comfort, and help. She was nice. I hope things worked out for her in the end.
That’s also the same day I soaked the undercarriage of my car coming into Vienna on the way up. I’m just glad I soaked it when I was less than a mile away from my destination, because once I hit that puddle, it seemed to be everything my car could do to reach 25 mph. It seemed to strain to reach 25 miles per hour. I left it on level 3 in the North Garage to dry out.
Outside of the march, the day was a normal day in DC for me. I went to Pentagon City Mall, Freedom Plaza, and I even visited the Exeloo at Huntington station.
When I emerged in the evening at Rosslyn in the late evening, I noticed a large picture of Ronald Reagan against stars and stripes on the big TV monitor that WJLA installed on the Rosslyn Twin Towers. I took a guess as to what happened, and went online with my cell phone to find out what was going on. It turned out that I was correct in my guess – Ronald Reagan kicked the bucket. He died at roughly 4:00 PM eastern time, right when we were at Donald Rumsfeld’s house (his actual residence on Kalorama Road) demonstrating against the war in Iraq. How strange to have that happen on a day I was being active with the anti-war movement.
Meanwhile, fast forward a year, and this June 5, I was working at Wally World, where a lot of the customers were downright crabby today. It was also hot and muggy outside, and with the humidity, it was just downright oppressive.
And you know what still gets me? People and how they treat their food, and their clothes. People will put their food directly onto the belt. Even fresh vegetables. But they will hold their clothes up over the belt and hand them to me directly, slowing me down, and making a major pain in the behind of themselves. I don’t get it. And it doesn’t matter whether the belt is perfectly clean or if it’s dirty. Same behavior. People will put their food in anything. I could probably spread horse manure all over the belt, and people would probably still put their food, that they will be eating, flat on the belt. But clothes, oh, heavens. Can’t put the clothes on the belt. I find it makes no sense, as you would think that one would be more picky about the food that they will be ingesting, vs. the clothes that will be on the outside of their body. Maybe it’s just me. Who knows.
Meanwhile, I wish our store had a Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga combo machine. Why? Because I love that machine. I use the easter egg that brings regular Pac-Man up for playing (up-up-up-down-down-down-left-right-left-right-left on the joystick on the game select screen), and I could play the original Pac-Man game for ages. Yay for Pac-Man. Forget my “orange soda break”, which is the name for my last break, since I always have an orange soda for that break. My breaks would consist of Pac-Man in the game room. I believe that I personally would be able to keep that machine profitable.
So all in all, an interesting day. I was thinking of the DC trip I did a year ago today for a lot of the day, where I attended the demonstration, and also did my DC thing.
Song: Hampster Dance, which I had running through my head at one point in the day.
Quote: "Did all these people take a cranky pill today?" - Me on people being irritable.
Categories: Activism, DC trips, Driving, Video games, Walmart