Thursday, November 3, 2011

"People Watching"

     This is from Firmley Shakewell's blog, 'Man on the Clapham Omnibus'  firmleyshakewell.blogspot.com

    Wow, what an incredible week. I don't usually let the rigors of everyday life get to me, but this week has been an exception. My only solace has been watching the dregs of society on the bus, and thanking the good Lord that there are always those worse off than you. What follows is a short compendium of my last three or four travels via the King County Metro System.

   1. 'Mentally Challenged Asian Grocery Worker'
    
     I can only assume from the way he was dressed, and the fact that grocery stores often do employ the handicapped, that this is where he worked. To be fair, he may not have been truly mentally handicapped, but if not, he was damn close. What he absolutely was, was socially challenged, although this did not stop his gregarious nature in the slightest.

     He entered the bus and sat down in the sideways facing handicapped seats - this is not what made me think he was different, plenty of regular folks sit in those seats - but it was rather his immediate turn and launch into conversation with the couple (in costume) that were sitting in the first seats next to him. The man was dressed in white face make-up, a gray wig, and a cowboy hat.
   "Oh, Beetlejuice! I haven't seen anyone dressed as Beetlejuice for years, mostly now all you see are slutty nurses, or maybe witches, but all the girls like to dress sexy at Halloween, I don't know why they all want to dress sexy, I'm in my work clothes right now because my company is so busy at Halloween and they need me to work a lot, but I can't get my work clothes dirty because then I would have to clean them and dry cleaning is so expensive and you have to go and pick it up and that can be hard when you take the bus, I see a lot of zombies too, not really sexy zombies, but a lot of different kinds of zombies, bloody zombies, scary zombies, boy zombies, girl zombies, funny zombies, coconut zombies, barbecue shrimp, shrimp stew..." 

     The couple was in obvious shock at their good fortune of seating choice, but was absolutely polite throughout, with the gentleman throwing out a few, 'yeahs' and 'uh-huhs' while the steady stream of conscience poured from without this chatty bag-boy.
   "I'm going to have a really great costume this year and it's going to be really awesome, but I can't party real hard 'cause I have to be the designated driver for all my friends so I can drive them around to all the really awesome parties that we are going to go to and..." 
   'Ding' Stop requested. Couple exits bus, for all I know, miles before their street. I can't blame them.


     2. 'Birthday Girl'


     Entering the bus, to the driver:
   "It's my birthday today!"
   "That's great, can you step behind the line please?"
   "Oh, yeah." She sits down and turns to the gentleman seated next to her.
   "It's my birthday." Smiles.
   "Can you give me twenty five cents?"
   "Sure, here."
   "Oh, thank you, now I have just enough for my groceries." A woman enters with two young girls in tow and sits across from Birthday Girl.
   "It's my birthday today, I'm thirty nine."
   "Oh," she said, a little startled, "that's nice."
   "Can you give me two dollars?"
   "Uh...I don't have two dollars." At this point, I've put two and two together and figured out that it probably isn't her birthday. Not to be deterred.
   "I just got back from my aunt's house. She took me to Sizzler's and bought me dinner. Tomorrow my mom is coming over and she is going to buy me lunch and give me a present too."
     'Ding' Stop requested. Mother and daughters exit bus. 


     A few stops later, a young twenty something guy and his friend get up to leave and as they're walking by the Birthday Girl, he says,
   "Hey, you dropped a dollar." She didn't, but this prompts her to call after him.
   "What? Did he say I dropped a dollar? Where? Do you see a dollar? Is it on the floor? Excuse me, sir, is there a dollar somewhere on the floor underneath my seat?" After an extensive search, she concludes that he was just teasing her and wonders aloud why on Earth he would do such a mean spirited thing on, of all days, her birthday.


     3. 'Eskihobos'


     I wish I could properly paint a picture of these two bleary-eyed transients, that would explain them in all their disheveled glory, but I fear that I am nowhere near the wordsmith necessary to convey the alcohol soaked, concert T-shirted, backpacked awesomeness that was, 'Eskihobos'.


     As they entered the bus they were already deep in conversation about two of their cohorts that they had apparently just left.
   "Yeah, when I knocked on the door I could hear some rustling and one of them shushed the other one, but after that, they were quiet."
   "They had probably just taken their hit."
   "Yeah, when they came out their eyes were so big they looked like two owls in the dark." After some discussion about their friends' crack cocaine usage and whether another acquaintance, 'Benny' had scored some heroin that morning, they began to wonder at the amount of money their friends might have left over from their assistance check, after said drug purchases.
   "They prolly still have a twenty left."
   "Man, that's two fifths of vodka right there!" Obvious connoisseurs of fine spirits.


     'Ding' stop requested.

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