The Metro As Icon of My Life

The very first field trip I remember happened when I was in second grade, when the DC Metrorail system opened its redline operations in Montgomery County in 1978. As a class we all got on the Metro train, rode it to the other end, then turned around and rode it back. I thought it was the most magical thing in the world. And I was hooked.

Metrorail was always the go-to assumption on how to get into the city. My family hated to go into the city, so it was mostly field trips or when my friends' parents generously invited me to go to a museum with them, but it was always there, and as soon as I was old enough to travel by myself, that's how I got around the city.

I rode the Metro to the Cherry Blossom parades that I marched in as a Camp Fire girl. I rode the Metro to Redskins games when they played at RFK. As high schoolers, my friends and I rode the Metro down across the DC line where our older friends were grandfathered under the 18 year drinking age restriction, and visited establishments with less than diligent enforcement policies so we could drink beer and eat pizza (and ride the huge Tenlytown escalator) with our friends. We rode the Metro to our Senior Banquet. We rode the Metro to our Graduation at Constitution Hall. We rode to museums and to the Mall for the 4th of July. We rode everywhere.

As a graduate student, and then as a pregnant graduate student, I rode the Metro twice a week between my office out in Gaithersburg and GW University. My kids love the ride the Metro, my older son asking several times a month to take the Metro just for the fun of it. And we usually sit behind the driver, to get a clear view of the tracks. And we never, ever thought twice about our safety on the Metro. Never. Their accident rate is impressive, serious injuries almost never happen, and even then it's more rare that they happen to a member of the public.

Until yesterday. When I heard the news I got a sick feeling in my stomach, realizing that if we'd been on that train we likely would have been among the fatalities. And that I will never be able to take my family's safety on the Metro for granted again. It makes me sad that a major icon of my life here growing up in DC won't be viewed the same way by my children. Our thoughts are with not only the families of those injured and lost in the accident, but with the system as a whole.

Original DC Metro Moms post. When she's not ruminating on the Metro system, Mary/FishyGirl blogs at The Fish Pond.