A TOP-DOWN FOURTH OF JULY
A Northwest D.C. man, driving to work on Independence Day, was feeling utterly out of sync with “the pursuit of Happiness” enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
But his spirits lifted on 23rd Street when he spotted a gleaming black Thunderbird with the top down sporting the license plate 55 TBIRD. He drew even with the vintage T-Bird and saw that the driver’s shirt was a patchwork of American flags.
Lowering a window in his air-conditioned car, he yelled, “Happy Fourth” to the man, who responded with a broad smile before turning right on L Street, pursuing happiness in his own jauntily patriotic way.
WHAT DOES A CHIEF OF STAFF DO?
A recent lunchtime found a downtown D.C. park crowded with food trucks and a thick heat. Two young women were waiting in line for the Dangerously Delicious Pies truck when an older colleague, who had been sitting in the shade reading a printed-out email, joined them with a predicament.
“What do I do about this?” the older woman asked. It was an email asking her to define her qualifications for a post at her government agency.
The younger women shook their heads. “Who knows what a chief of staff does?” said one with dark, curly hair.
“Open your mind,” the other, sporting a blond ponytail, offered. “Open your mind and think ‘California.’ ”
PURSUING PERFECTION ON THE RED LINE
A man and a woman were waiting on a Red Line train at the Bethesda station. When the train arrived, though, its doors didn’t open. They waited.
The train inched up a couple of feet and stopped. But, again, its doors didn’t open. The man and woman waited.
A few seconds passed and the train moved about six feet farther up the platform, stopped and finally opened its doors.
“I guess he wanted to make it perfect,” the woman said as they trudged up the platform toward the door.
“I would have settled for pretty good,” the guy replied.
CAN YOU SPARE A DOLLAR?
At a busy intersection in Aspen Hill, a woman noticed the driver in front of her was caught in a predicament. A man was leaning into the driver’s window, asking a little too enthusiastically for spare cash.
Judging the man to be a bit unstable — and unwilling to part with her hard-earned cash — the woman tried to roll up her window before the donation-seeker made his way over.
Too late.
The gentleman caught the movement and turned her way as her window rolled up. He began screaming at the woman, then reached into his cup, plucked out a dollar and threw it at her. It landed in the gutter.
Didn’t he need that, she wondered. Apparently not. In the gutter the dollar stayed.
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