Through my eyes

So, lucky you. I seem to have insomnia.

Can someone please tell me what our friend Punxsutawney Phil had to say back on ground hog's day? Mother Nature has proven to be a mean temptress this year. We have a few beautiful days here and there and now I hear word of the possibility of snow flurries in coming days? Now I love the white stuff, but I'd really like to enjoy DC amidst the sunshine of a comfortably warm spring day.

Funny things always seem to happen on the metro. Some days I get packed in like a sardine. Usually this requires exercising my nascent surfing skills. Getting a pole or something to hang onto is not necessarily a given. So far, I've survived relativly unscathed. However, there were one or two episodes where I fell into the person next to me (no one very dashing, unfortunately), but I have to say I've learned a lot from the likes of "Blue Crush" and "Point Break" or perhaps it was Pee Wee Herman in my childhood days. But seriously, making a bit of a game of it, that is testing my balance, really helps me take my mind off the fact that 7 times out of 10, I get motion sick from the frequent stopping and jolting back and forth. Yeah, I probably need the patch or something. When it get's really bad, I tend to think back to a joke told by my old high school friend Jason Radice. Jason loved to joke about going to an amusement park and riding one of those pendulum-like pirate boats and pretending he needed to vomit. Hmmm, I wonder if I could get people to back off and make some space?

This morning's metro ride I was inundated with Boy Scouts. They took up all the seats! To their credit (and the leadership of their Scout masters) the young cub scouts were rather well behaved, all decked out in their respective badges, scarfs, and regalia. Of course, they were boys, and boys will be boys. I heard a good number of giggles along the way, but nothing too outrageous. Just a bunch of boys enjoying the ride, especially being out of the confines of school.

As for me, I actually latched on to a pole and listened to Billie Holiday while I attempted to read part of The Washington Post's freebie, The Express. I read a short article about the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's historic achievement, paving the way for the integration of major league baseball. A number of hall-of-famers in the article lamented the fact that many young African American boys today grow up not even knowing what Robinson did. Many former players and sports writers are particularly concerned that current African American participation in the sport has dropped to a historic low of 8 percent. The Post's Michael Wilbon argues that baseball "is being passed over instead of passed down". Rather, basketball and LeBron's 90 million dollar contract with Nike -- even before stepping foot on the court --seem to have the upperhand with African American youth.

These are definitely fast times we seem to be living in. What does Ferris Bueller say? "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it." As I ride the metro this morning with all the other Virginia commuters, scurrying to work with our mp3 players, BlackBerry devices, books, newspapers, briefcases, laptops, and magazine numero uno, The Economist, when I stop and think about it, I guess I'm pretty glad for the boy scouts. I'm glad they distract me from my morning rush. I'm glad I take a moment to watch them peer through the metro train's windows. After all, you never know what you might be missing.