I began to recognize the symptoms of Stockholm syndrome about four hours into my day touring Washington with the eighth-graders of Centreville, Mich. I was starting to identify with my captors. I was going non-native.
Which is a difficult thing for a native Washingtonian to admit. Unless your livelihood depends on tourists directly, your spot on the STT — Spectrum of Tourist Tolerance — probably falls somewhere between Grudging Acceptance and Boiling Resentment.
After all, tourists crowd our sidewalks. They gawp at our motorcades. They clog our museums and keep “Shear Madness” in business at the Kennedy Center. They don’t stand on the right.
Worst of all, tourists penetrate our self-obsessed bubble, reminding us that America is full of places that aren’t Washington, places such as Centreville, Mich., population 1,425.
I’m standing on the Metro platform at Union Station with 40 teenagers, 10 chaperones and tour director Kelly Smigiel, who works for Brightspark, the company that organized the trip.
“Terry didn’t want to do this,” Kelly says as we wait on the platform. She means ride the Metro. “But I said it was part of the experience.”
Terry is Terry Miller, the Centreville Junior High math and history teacher who since 2004 has been taking the town’s eighth-graders to Washington for their end-of-the-year trip. A large, ruddy man in khaki shorts and a yellow polo shirt, Terry looks like a fellow who understands that it’s important he return to Centreville with the same number of kids he left with.
There’s the sound of an incoming train, and the students seem to vibrate with excitement.
* * *
I’d met up with them that morning at the U.S. Capitol, repeatedly asking the various groups in line the same question — “Are you from Michigan?” (“No, we’re from Iowa”), “Are you from Michigan?” (“No, Wisconsin”) — until I found them.
It was the final day of their three-day “Passport to Adventure in Washington, D.C.” After a 12-hour bus ride from Michigan and an overnight in Gettysburg, Pa., the kids had toured the Mall and the National Archives, and had had their picture taken in front of the White House. On Day 2, they had visited Mount Vernon and Washington National Cathedral, and seen “Anything Goes” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre in Columbia. On Day 3, they were set to tour the Capitol and Ford’s Theatre; eat lunch at Union Station; visit Arlington National Cemetery; eat dinner at the Pentagon City mall; explore the Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR, World War II, Vietnam and Korean war memorials; survey the city from the roof of the Kennedy Center; and then paddle across the Potomac in homemade sampans while singing “Yankee Doodle.”
I’m kidding about that last one. What I mean is, these kids were busy.
“It’s go, go, go, go, go,” Terry says. “I have the schedule so packed they can’t get into any mischief.”
After our Capitol tour, I fall in with Rachel and Sarah Sirna, dark-haired 13-year-old twins who often speak in unison and have the endearing habit of holding up their right hands and pointing to various Michigan geographic features on their palms: Here is Detroit; here is Grand Rapids; here, at the very bottom near the wrist, is Centreville. ...
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