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Tourists,
tourists
By Susan Olling
The National Mall and Memorial Parks provide excellent examples of
tourists behaving, well, like tourists. Give them lots of room if you
can. I won’t even go into the indescribably bad fashion
statements that are seen down there.
Some of the events below may have involved locals, but it doesn’t
matter.
Comments from “regular” visitors about the disrespectful behavior of
school groups were heard earlier, in March rather than in May, this
past spring. I have no doubt that teachers prepare their kids for
these pilgrimages. However, something seems to happen by the time
they get here. Perhaps all that preparation seeps out of their
cranial vaults on the way to D.C. Perhaps it’s because the kids
are away from parents and school. Perhaps the memorials are
boring, ancient history. I welcome any other theories.
Kudos to an adult for the way this was handled. The pool at the
World War II Memorial was drained. The signs asking people to
stay out of the pool were still there, but some members of a school
group just had to walk on into the empty pool last spring. Who
knows why, these are school kids. An adult with the group (gasp)
told these little dears to go immediately to their bus. Sorry for
the sudden intake of air. Adults with school groups can act
worse than the kids they’re supposed to chaperone.
Hot weather brings tourists who think it’s perfectly acceptable to wade
or soak their feet in the pools at the various memorials. The
worst offenders seemed to be those who think the pool at the World War
II Memorial is their personal wading pool. I keep forgetting that
tourists ignore signs. Seen it too many times to count.
Some visitors were most definitely not happy with these tourists.
Most memorably, a six-year-old boy had very strong opinions about
people in the pool.
An unidentified person pulled the fire alarm at the Washington Monument
recently. Unfortunately for the tourists who were waiting, the
monument had to be closed until the alarm was reset. There is
important information on the backs of the Washington Monument tickets
about site closure due to weather or other unforeseen
events. Please read and heed. Park rangers and police
officers are not there to be verbally abused because the monument has
to be closed. If the closure is due to weather, please don’t ask
when the weather system will pass. Rangers and officers are not
the National Weather Service.
It puzzles and amuses me that there are still tourists who don’t
realize they need tickets for the Washington Monument. This has
been going on for twenty years. Tourists can blame no one but
themselves for their lack of preparation for their visits.
The best comedy, in my humble opinion, occurs at the Korean War
Veterans Memorial. The parking spaces are for
handicapped-designated vehicles. It’s delicious when
someone finds a ticket on their vehicle’s windshield for illegally
parking in one of those spaces and wants to debate their $250.00
souvenir with a Park Police officer. News flash: if you
don’t have handicapped designation on your vehicle and get a ticket,
you’ll get nowhere yapping at the officer. Taking Metro would
have prevented this predicament. Thank you for providing free
entertainment for onlookers, though.
Not sure if they’re Buckeye Nut U. alumni or just folks from Ohio, but
some tourists have been doing that tired O-H-I-O formation on the
Mall. The sites deserve respect, folks. If you must do
something so silly, please do it in the privacy of your home.
We’ve been getting more requests to recharge phones where I
volunteer. Tourists don’t seem to understand what the word
security means. What I’d like to say (but I don’t) is something
like this. How do we know that what you have in your hot little
hand is a cell phone and not an explosive device? In this
post-9/11 world, no one should be that trusting. Or this: what
you’re asking to do is called energy vampirism. Please make
sure your phone is fully charged before you leave your hotel room.
The start of the next swarm of school groups starts in a few
weeks. Oh joy. By the way, have I mentioned how much more
fun Metro is in January and February?
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