Rally for Reason

I am blessed.  With friends who push the limits of extreme at every polar end of the political/philosophical spectrum, and lots who run amok in between, swaying one way or another.  While I may agree more, idealogically, with some than others, I have found a common ground of some sort to walk around and get coffee on with all of them.  I love all of my friends.  Even the crazies.
Both out of respect for them and the diversity of whoever else is out there (and because I've known and loved enough crazies not to want to deal with the drama of setting anyone off) I try to keep my political/religious/philosophical/etc opinions mostly out of this blog.  But I am going to go ahead and admit that today I had every intention of hauling my fat belly and small child to the Rally on the mall.
Because:
1) If I lived in Japan, at some point I would eat sushi.  If I moved to California, at some point I would go to the beach.  As a resident of DC, I think it only right that I attend a rally on The Mall.  And (since we had a newborn and missed out on all the presidential election stuff in 08) this one was the Mother of Rallies on The Mall in our time here. 
2) If I had the opportunity to go to Woodstock or the Million Man March, I would have gone for it.  Because there is just plain something cool about being present during a historic event.
3) I kind of like the message.  The "Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear" was not really a political rally per se, but it was making a point still, I think, which I choose to interpret in a positive way.  
You do what you want!  Make signs and jump around, boycott, yawn, whatever! Me, I felt like going.
So there. Judge and rant. Or applaud.  It doesn't really matter anyways, because here is what happened.  Little One and I got all packed up and ultra prepared. J was working, the friend we were supposed to rally with had to make an emergency trip, and the one we had planned to meet there was waffling, so we were on our own.  But ready to rally!
Then we got to the Metro station.  WOW.  I wish I could describe it properly.  There were hundreds and hundreds of people there, holding their signs, wearing their round pins. 
The line just to buy a ticket for the train went through the entire station.
 
Out the door, across the courtyard, aaaaallll the way down the parking lot.

To the street.  Around the block. And- do you see that other line of people in the back there?-
(top, right corner)

Doubled back around the corner, up the other parking lot, and around the bend.

I have never seen anything like it.  I almost turned right back around.  But I decided to at least give it shot  (which I shouldn't have said out loud, because I spent the next 5 minutes consoling Little One that we weren't going to get shots on the train).
Since I have my commuter card, we miraculously bypassed this throng which had been standing for hours, and got on a train with not too long a wait.  The train was already full, but the next station was also teeming with people, who poured in somehow until we were all scrunched in, pressed against each other.  Every station was the same.
People who had been watching packed trains go by all morning and were sick of standing there made a mad rush for it and forced their way into cars that had nowhere for them to go.  People started getting more impatient and rough.  People on the train started getting more uncomfortable and defensive.  Ironically, for a rally about "being reasonable", people started getting a bit crazy.  A lot of them were drunk.  The air reeked of alcohol and sweat and it was hot and hard to breathe.  Some people were yelling and pushing, and every stop just seemed to take the high excitement in the air and turn it just a little more desperate.
One guy actually tried to perch on Little One's stroller tray, because the vertical space above Her was the only place left to fit a body.  People were falling on top of Her and knocking hard against Her stroller.  She started to get scared and overwhelmed and overheated. Truthfully She was already under the weather and it was just too much.  She started to cry a tiny, timid, trembling-lip cry and ask me to pick Her up.  Which I couldn't, because the train was so full I could not move my arms. 
Well.  There was a time I would have rolled with this, and maybe even thought it was kind of fun, in a crazy, exciting kind of way.  And I admit that I wanted, for Little One, to be able to tell Her one day that She had Been There.  But.  The number one Mama-rule and responsibility is to keep the Little One safe.  And my mommy instincts were sounding the alarm that maybe things were getting too out of hand this time.  Plus.  I really, really, really had to pee. 

Look at the train windows- packed!

So, as much as I hate to admit that I backed out of something, I did.  I yelled at the top of my lungs when we stopped that if someone would HELP ME get out, there would be room for them on the train, and people started ripping other people away from us until we got free, and the crowd swarmed the gap behind us.  Phew.
We tried.  I think I can say we tried, right?  I expected it to be crowded, but I didn't expect people to be drunk, at 10:30am.  I didn't expect it to be scary.  Shows what I know! Maybe I shouldn't have picked this for our first rally.  We should have warmed up with, say, a rally for saving the south-indonesian spotted salamander or something.  At any rate, we took the metro back to J's hospital, where there was a big Halloween party for kids, with trick-or-treating, games, crafts, elmo, dancing, and other fun stuff.  Much more Little One's speed.  
And that's the thing about having kids.  No matter what your political/idealogical leanings are, no matter what your ideas of a good time on a Saturday are, when you become a parent, they shift.  The way you express them changes.  There is compromise, there are alternatives.  You have to, well...be reasonable.  Which I guess was sort of the point, after all.