Nerves

Due to the complaints of "My feet are tiiiireddd." from the children as we hoofed it around the mall in Washington D.C., The Boss Man and I made an executive decision to hitch a ride so we could see a bit more. The obvious solution was right in front of us as we walked out of the Museum of Natural History: a pedi-cab!! It would provide delight and entertainment to the children- and provide us a way to get all the way up to the capitol building and back to our parking lot. And to boot, Cash could sing "I'm just a bill, just an ordinary bill, and I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill..." over and over while we watched the impressive building get closer and closer. Much better than whining.

The dude (and I call him that because what else can you call a skinny biker guy with stringy long blonde hair who hangs out waiting to catch fares on his bike) refilled his gatorade bottle and chugged a bit as we arranged ourselves on the rickshaw. Then he hopped on his cycle and started out- very slowly. You could see his skinny little sinewy legs straining.

I tried very very hard to sit back and enjoy the ride with my kids. But all I could do was look at how skinny this guy was- and notice his b.o. It seemed easy enough to pull us along on the flats and once we got going, but starting out each time we had to stop for traffic took effort. And I could not help it- I felt guilty.

I'm hoping this guy enjoys what he is doing. I even asked him several times if this was a job he loved. He said he did, but sounded kind of nonchalant. I don't know.... it could have been that he really didn't dig lugging fat well-off tourists with whiney kids around the sights or it could have been that he was too high to answer my questions with much enthusiasm. It just seemed like we were "those people." You know, paying others to do hard labor so we could sit back and act like royalty. It made my nerves bad.