Today I was a slug...

and it was everything I had hoped it would be.

Most people who live in the metro DC area are at least marginally familiar with the concept of slugging. For those that aren't, it's not some great plan to engender violence, nor is it the act of doing nothing. Around here, being a slug, or slugging, simply means taking advantage of the carpool lanes by riding in cars with complete strangers.

Until about a month ago, I was skeptical of the whole slug idea. Then Tim and I started carpooling but we still needed another person, so we started picking up slugs. This has worked out very nicely for us. So today, since Tim (a true slug) is off all week, I tucked my trepidation carefully in my pocket and drove to our carpool lot. I had decided that I would see if there were people waiting or cars waiting and make my decision about driving based on that. Of course this morning, there were neither cars nor people in line. After carefully reviewing just over 30 years of my mother chanting quietly in my ear, "Don't take rides from strangers", I pulled into a parking spot and went to be the first person in line. Thankfully, someone came very shortly thereafter who needed a slug, so I didn't have to stand in the pre-dawn frigidness for long.

You know what? They were pretty cool people. And even cooler? They work just about a block from me, so I didn't even have to take the metro from the pre-approved slug-dumping location. There was fascinating conversation spanning topics from grocery stores (apparantly Harris Teeter is coming to a location near me in 2007 - YAY! I love Harris Teeter!) to football. I had very little to offer on the whole football topic, sad to say. Pretty much my knowledge of football can be summed up as follows:

• There are guys in tight pants on a field
• They throw a pointy-egg shaped ball at each other
• Sometimes they kick it instead (though the rules on when it's ok to do this escape me)
• There are things called "downs" but no one has successfully explained to me what they are
• The goal posts look like a tuning fork
• There's lots of tackling and butt smacking that somehow no one seems to think is weird or indicative of alternative lifestyle choices

Anyway, the car ride was great. And now that I know my mom was wrong about getting rides from strangers, I have to think that maybe in all those years I could've had a LOT more candy.