Metro Station

If you ask to anybody here in DC where’s the underground, they don’t understand, and they look at you as a weird one. Here underground is named Metro. But is the same thing.
300 miles more on the East Coast, New York. If you ask for the Metro station, maybe they’ll tell you “I don’t know any place named like that”. New Yorkers call it “Subway”. But is the same thing.
And if you are in London, there’s no Subway and no Metro: there’s the Underground. Always the same thing.
Anyway, I’m in Washington, so I’ll call it “Metro”.
My stop is East Falls Church, orange line, in Virginia: every morning I buy a ticket, and I evaluate it at the gate, that opens up. There’s a security man for every station, mine is a black, gray-haired old man, sometimes lazy: he checks if people are going to stamp the ticket.

I live with another Italian guy, as young as me: well, we’re Italians, so sometimes if we don’t have the coins we try to get over the gate without the ticket. The black man gets up, and usually call “Sir! Sir!”: he got you. Shit. There’s nothing that you can do to make him changing of mind, maybe just speak Italian and say “I didn’t know” with a awful accent. Sometimes it works.
Americans don’t try to get to the train without ticket, it’s unthinkable: there’s the black man, maybe he’ll get you… I thought they were fool. After the black man got me three times, I think they are right.