Today I’m on my way home on the bus, just sitting there minding my own buisness when the strange lady sitting two persons away from me taps me on my lap. I’m somewhat startled. This conversation ensues:
Strange lady: Hey, I was just thinking. . .
Me: Excuse me?
SL: Yeah, I was thinking about Hilary Clinton.
Me: Wha. . ?
SL: Do you speak English?
Me: Huh?
SL: Hilary Clinton is one smart lady. She wrote that book and is gonna get 8 million dollars. You do speak English, don’t you?
Me: Yeah I do, Crazy Lady.
SL taps the lap of someone else two people down in the other direction and continues singing the praises of Mrs. Clinton.
Another time me and my two girlfriends were riding the 4 train. In walks this little Spanish guy who starts yelling. He says, “I’m gonna shoot you all!!! Yeah. I’m gonna shoot every single one of you. Ima shoot with. . .” He reaches into a chest pocket . . . “with my BANANA!!!” and proceeds to pretend shoot people with the banana he pulls out of his pocket.
And then there was the time I was on the Franklin Ave shuttle. There was this guy really grooving to his headphones. He’s bopping and snapping and doing intricate dance steps. Which is a little strange all by itself but goes that extra weird step when you notice that the other end of headphones wire swinging about his chest attached to nothing at all.
Mass transit must impregnate its riders with weird rays.
I’ve seen plenty of weirdness on my daily bus commute, but I think the best one was the afternoon I was riding home from work about a year ago. In the seat directly ahead of me were two guys talking quite loudly about the benefits of born-again Christianity; whilst the guy in the seat behind me was on his cell phone attempting to buy a gram of cocaine.
The ying and yang of the mass-transit universe, with me stuck in the middle.
I once got called in to fix systems at work very early one morning. I caught the 4:40am bus, along with one young lady in about her mid-30’s. The bus was completely empty; we were the only 2 passengers. I sat about 3 seats behind her, on the opposite side.
A few stops later, another passenger got on. Noisy, disheveled, smelly, and rather drunk. He sees the young lady, his eyes light up, and he heads for her, saying “Hi there, little lady”. And as he swings around to plant his butt in the seat next to her, she gives him this incredible stiff arm to the chest, bounces him all the way across the aisle and up against the windows on the opposite side. All without losing her place in the romance paperback she was reading! Meanwhile, he’s slumped in the seat on the other side, going “Whaa…” and seemingly not quite sure what just happened.
I just completely lost it; I busted out laughing so hard I almost fell off my seat. And then she started giggling behind her book. The drunk guy turned around and yelled at me “What the hell are you laughing about?” but I was laughing way too hard to even try answering him.
After mumbling & swearing a bit more, he gets up and stumbles up to the front of the bus, and starts complaining about us to the bus driver (who’s seen the whole thing in his mirror). At the next main intersection, he asks the driver to ‘let him the hell off this bus’. But before exiting, he stands in the doorway, looks back at us, and yells out “there sure are a hell of a lot of damn rude people riding the buses these days!”.
About a block later, the bus driver, in a perfectly calm voice, looks back and says “Lady, you ever thought of trying out for the Vikings defensive line?” And we completely lost it again – must have laughed for the next mile or so.