“it’s a free daily that comes out whenver and costs a dollar”

Those of you in the DC area probably know about Express, the free daily that The Washington Post has people hand out on the metro, and that usually ends up liberally littering the stations. Well there was a letter to the editor the other day that I read and just had to respond to:

I can certainly see the woman’s point, but come on… So I wrote a response to this and got an e-mail that afternoon asking me to call and confirm that I did indeed write it, I called, I confirmed. I didn’t know if they’d actually print it, but they did… sort of:

It’s a heavily edited version of:

To the writer of “Pregnant Pause” – here’s a tip my former manager (while pregnant) showed me, when we rode the trains together she would stand near the priority seats or the ones nearest the door, rub her belly and sigh or groan loudly. Sooner or later someone would offer her a seat.

More seriously, if you are in need of a seat on a train, just ask someone if they would mind if you sat down. I am one that will always offer a seat to someone, male or female, older or younger, pregnant or not, that just looks as if they need to sit down more than I. But courtesy and chivalry are not constants, too many riders won’t speak to another person on the car, whether its due to needing a seat, or needing to get by to enter or exit the car. Simply smile, and speak up, it could work wonders.

There was nothing in their e-mails that said they planned to chop it quite so severely, but I understand the need for space. I guess I’m lucky it got in at all. And a co-worker stopped me this morning and asked, “Is this you?” So it’s kinda cool. 🙂