My Opinion

So this morning a guy around my age got on the metro at the stop after mine. He sat down next to me and pulled out the Washington Post Express morning paper, flipped  to the crossword puzzle and began working on it. I wasn’t paying much attention, but then I happened to glance down two stops later and notice that he’d almost completed it.

I’m pretty sure my jaw literally dropped. I mean, we’re not talking about a Saturday morning New York Times puzzle here, but still. Five minutes and you’re almost done? I watched him rapidly finish up the last few words. Then he flipped to the Sudoku puzzle. He finished it in less than five minutes.

Next up was the Scrabble game. He struggled briefly with the word “yeoman.” And by briefly, I mean about 20 seconds. As he folded up his completed paper, I said, “I’m impressed.” He laughed and said, “Just a way to make the ride less boring.”

You know what I do to make the ride less boring? Stare blankly into space. We got off at the same stop (he was already at the top of the escalator before I’d even gotten on at the bottom—a metaphor for our lives, I’d imagine). My stop is the same one as the White House. I’m really hoping that’s where he was headed to work this morning because I’m pretty sure that guy could solve an international crisis on like a long car ride.