To know Shady Grove metro station is to have a large collection of Tupperware

I recently heard a fellow party attendee consider aloud what Shady Grove Station must be like. The entire group he was conversing with chimed in that they’ve been similarly curious about the western end of WMATA’s Red Line. I was amused that such a large group had universally given Shady Grove consideration. How disappointed they were to learn from me that it is a parking lot attached to a highway, which connects commuters to thousands of homes with one of five floor plans. (Perhaps I should consider charging city folk five bucks to give them a tour of the S.G. station grounds.)

Today I made my semi-regular weekend journey to the end of the line to see my family – a travel experience that on beautiful days is made arduous by metro’s weekend rider-ship: Zoogoers, Nationals fans and their sluggish ilk. My ephemeral maternal desires choke and die on these trips, as the Wal-Mart families around me fail to make quiet the piercing shrieks of their many children. I wonder if I just seem like a real weirdo to them, a grown woman reading a comic book with robots and monsters and humanoid dog creatures.

My parents pick me up, take me to home where I play Scrabble, eat the home cooking that I hold culpable for my adolescent heftiness, and return to the city owning leftovers contained in yet another piece of my mother’s endless Tupperware supply.