A woman in the back, too intoxicated to know she is embarrassing herself, is yelling at her friends, who are also too intoxicated to know she is embarrassing herself. The tone is good natured, but the content is inappropriate: sexually explicit, violent, and generally vulgar. The rest of us sit in silence, some amused, most embarrassed for her. At around 7th & James, her hollering escalates to NBA finals/Prince concert levels, and the subject matter changes.

“I’m a Mohawk, people! Capeesh? A Mohawk. Capeesh? Yep, Mohawk. Capeesh? Capeesh? Capeesh? Caaaaaaa-peeeeeeesh?”

At a break in the hollering, a Spanish-speaking man in front of me turns to his fellow passengers and asks, “What that means–‘capeesh’?”

Several giggly, slightly drunk Seattle U students got on with us at Benaroya. They sat in the front near the bus driver and started asking her lots of questions. She was very pleasant and tolerant, considering their level of annoyingness. Here’s a sample of the conversation:

Giggly Seattle U girl: Do you ever have, like, crazy people getting on?
Bus driver: Let’s put it this way: I stop at Harborview.

Yesterday I stopped at Victrola, en route to another hospital visit with my mom. While I was in line, two of the baristas–you know the types: Gen Y, artsy, fit, slightly alternative–started talking about the bus. The guy barista called the girl barista his “bus buddy.”

“I always see her on the 43,” he explained to the small group of us waiting for our drinks.

I couldn’t resist the opportunity to join in a conversation about buses and so said something useless about the 43 being the bus to ride on the Hill.

“Yeah,” said the guy behind me. “Everybody’s doing it.”

Over the weekend, I rode the bus with a man who was pretend-talking on the phone. Remember when you were little and you imagined that you had some very important job–like you were the president or something–and you would pick up an imaginary phone and have very important imaginary conversations with your VP and members of your cabinet? Picture that, except with a grown man and a real cell phone.

The man in question was old and very frail, yet he stood in the back near the door, despite the numerous empty seats. Here’s how his “conversation” went:

“I’m going to finish that section on composition.” [pause] “I did comment on that. Yes, that was excellent, and congratulations to you. OK. Uh-huh. We’ll wait and see if he graduates. OK. Alright. Uh-huh. Yes.”

Then, he began again.

“I’m going to finish that section on composition.” [pause] “I did comment on that. Yes, that was excellent, and congratulations to you. OK. Uh-huh. We’ll wait and see if he graduates. OK. Alright. Uh-huh. Yes.”

And again. And again, using exactly the same words, in exactly the same order, at exactly the same pace, for the entire ride. He was still talking while the driver lowered the lift to let him off.

Warning: Do not click this link if you are in a meeting or a coffee shop–or on a bus with wireless access. :) It makes noise.

Butt-Head makes his move

In my new tradition of adding up the bus numbers I ride each day, today would be a zero. Why ride when the sun is out and your destinations are close enough to walk to? (And yes, to the many friends I have talked into walking somewhere with me, I realize that “close” is a subjective word.)

As much as I love beautiful days like this, they always make me think of people who can’t enjoy them–specifically, people in prisons and hospitals. Maybe it’s because of the war, or what my mother has been going through lately.

Maybe it’s because of that sunny day almost exactly two years ago, when I sat across from an adorable three-year old boy on the ride up James from 3rd Avenue. He was standing on the seat next to his mother, pointing out trees, birds, and everything else he could identify. When we passed the jail, he started jumping up and down and waving frantically out the window. Then, at the top of his lungs, he hollered:

“Hi Daddy!”

I’m still recovering.

College-age girl: “I think I’m gonna rent Footloose. I’ve been craving a little Kevin Bacon.”

Friend of college-age girl: “Yeah. I’ve always wanted a boyfriend who like, when he gets mad, he like, goes to a barn and dances, to like, burn off some steam.”

I don’t have time to post anything new tonight, but I just came across this post from my “other” blog–written almost exactly a year ago–and thought it funny enough to share:

Tonight on the 48, I sat next to an old man who was wearing a tweed jacket and reading The New York Times with a magnifying glass. He was moving an envelope from line to line to keep his place, the way they taught us to do with bookmarks in first grade. Oh yeah, and he was balancing a rake between his knees.

On the other side of the aisle, two loud, middle-school age girls giggled and shrieked incessantly. The young women were apparently taking part in one of those pregnancy prevention programs they have in sex ed and home ec classes these days–the kind where you have to pretend to have a baby for a day or a week or a month or whatever. In the old days, they used chicken eggs for these experiments. These days, they have battery operated dolls that apparently act just like real babies. Right before we got to my stop, the girls’ mechanical baby started wailing. The girls started wailing right along with it.

[scream] “Omigod–it’s crying on the bus!” [giggle, giggle, giggle]

“I hate this stupid sh*t! [giggle, giggle]

[The “mother” pulls a bottle out of her book bag and shoves it into the wailing doll’s mouth.]

“No! You can’t just feed the m***erf***er. You gotta move it around and sh*t.”

Indeed.