DC Memories

I have lived seven of my thirty-nine years in or near our nation’s capitol. Of course, six of those years were the first six, as I was born in the District of Columbia at the long-forgotten Columbia Hospital for Women. That was always a source of embarrassment for me, as being born in a woman’s hospital made me feel unmanly. I have since come to terms with it, though. Really, it’s cool. It’s still awkward on public forms when I have to fill in the city and state in which I was born, since I wasn’t born in a state. Now I know how babies born in leap year feel. (I don’t know what that means.)

We moved to California shortly after my sixth birthday, and I didn’t return to DC until a family vacation in 1993. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I was able to remember – about the landscape, about the people, about everything. I had a very clear memory of walking home from church and having my father explain to me that people sweat in the wintertime, too. I refer to this as the pivotal “Sweat Discourse.” I could probably reproduce it if I wanted to, but I don’t want to, and neither do you.

After I got married in ’94, I lived in DC with my new bride for nine months before heading back to Jackson Hole to launch the second season of the Grand Teton Mainstage Theatre. I spent several months as an intern for Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, who taught me two very important life lessons:

1. Hatred corrodes the container it’s carried in.

And, more importantly:

2. Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.

I returned to Washington in 1999 when I accepted a position as a Senior Associate at Burson-Marsteller, an international public relations firm. What I didn’t realize was that the client I had been hired to represent – Iridium Satellite Phones – had gone bankrupt a few days before I arrived. So I had a cushy little cubicle on K Street and, literally, nothing to do. It was then that I started surfing the Internet to kill time and sought out information on a nascent Battlestar Galactica revival. If it weren’t for Burson-Marsteller, Languatron and I would never have met. That sounds gross. I should take it back, but the truth stands, despite my best attempts to, you know, not let it stand.

Anyway, I got a job offer back in Utah that matched my salary, so I left after three months. So I can say that I’ve worked in DC for a full year, separated by more than half a decade.

I love DC. I love the monuments, especially all lit up at night. The cherry blossoms in the spring around the Jefferson Memorial are something everyone needs to see before they die. I love reading the Washington Post and, when nobody’s looking, the Washington Times. I love the public transportation system, which is clean and efficient and actually gets you to useful places. I’ve toured the White House and the Capitol – I was actually a semi-official Capitol Tour Guide when I worked in Sen. Simpson’s office – and I could wander through the Smithsonian all day long – and have. As much as I get disgusted with the current political scene, I see the Washington Monument or that big old Lincoln dude and I realize the country’s probably going to pull through.

That’s reassuring, because our next president is really going to suck.