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Monday, March 17, 2008

Downtown Seattle is Like a Box of Chocolates

I'm getting hardened to it, I really am, but the guy on the bus this morning caught even jaded little me by surprise. After riding most of the way to the downtown on the OOL (Overheated, Overcrowded and Late) #36 bus standing up, frantically grasping at the slippery overhead bar which the drivers must dust liberally with baby powder each morning to ensure maximum slipperiness, I finally got a seat. (I never take a seat on that bus without a measure of cynicism, because sure as pickles will muck up your plumbing, some incredibly feeble, wobbly, exhausted, ancient person will get on at the next stop, laden until bent nearly double with a month's shopping, coughing, arthritic and 99% of the time too short to reach the be-powdered overhead bar, and I'll have to give up my seat anyway. Beacon Hill must have a wee, elderly person factory that works overtime.) So I sink into my seat, hoping I'll be able to stay there awhile. If you read my most recent blog, you know I'm doing this stupid running thing, and that means I'm terminally fatigued pretty much always. It was cold this morning, and wet, so the overheated bus is quickly degenerating into a swamp of body heat and wet-overcoat smell. Still overcrowded, we're huddled together like sheep on the edge of a cliff. At a downtown stop not too far from my own, the seat next to me is vacated. I enjoy a very brief feeling of space before today's Loony slams his body into the seat.

Uh oh, I think.

Indeed. "Fuck all dem bitches," he says, and looks to me for approval. I look at the window. (I would have looked OUT of it, but it was foggy with passenger-breath and hair oils.) The Loon adds a disclaimer: "No disrespect for wives and dat." Well, that's all right then.

At the next stop, he gets off, presumably to spread the Gospel of Loon to the next group of the unenlightened.

I get to work, ride up in the elevator to my little cubicle on the windowless floor I work on. McBitchy, this pain-in-t'arse (Happy St. Pats) little girl I have to work with, gives me a smug look which means I've screwed up and she knows about it. I stick the tip of her ponytail in the shredder and walk away.

"Fuck all dem bitches," I think.

6 comments:

Lynn Sinclair said...

Interesting trip into the office, huh? It's so uncomfortable when you're the target of a loon's tirade.

Shannon Perry said...

I know everyone thinks this, but it seems to happen to me a lot. Like, weekly. I just have one of those yell-at-me faces...?

NuclearToast said...

I love that you say you're "doing this stupid running thing." I also love that, after running into loonies on the bus all the time, you think I'm normal. Relatively, anyway.

DK said...

LOL @ "No disrespect for wives and dat"

Ash said...

OMG - When I rode the bus to work I was a crazy magnet too. I didn't have enough for a Walkman (yes, back then we didn't have iPods). But I did spring for a cheap set of headphones to wear. I just put the disconnected end in my pocket and bobbed my head once in a while. That way you can ignore the crazies and not feel rude or make them angry.

And WTF is up with all that hair grease on the windows? Ewwwwwwww.

Platypus Insurrection said...

Ms. Angst: What a lot of fun. I have this bus experience every day in Seattle. The Loonies are out in droves. Love your writing.
Barry Jack and Leonard
Platypus Insurrection