El Autobus

Having been declared medically unfit to drive, (thank you Vasovagal Syncope), I've taken to wandering the city on public transport. Let me tell you, each trip is, indeed, a trip.

Today, for instance, two hideous backwoods escapees boarded. Clearly closely related, ie, more than kissing cousins, as it were, they settled in for a delightful romp checking for each others' lice and sharing what I assume was fine brandy out of a decadent brown paper bag. A few stops later, a man with an acoustic guitar gets on, sits down, and, oh so casually, strums out the first chord of Dueling Banjos, otherwise known as the theme from Deliverance. He gets glared at by the hicks, and immediately launches into the song in it's entirety. I think that's the closest I've ever come to having a stroke, holding my laughter in.

Then, of course, there is the "Woo Girl". She is not Asian, nor is she a cheerleader. Sheis a very angry black chick, whose conversations go like this, "I'm so mad bitch, I'ma cut you, I'ma kill you, you little bitch-skank-ho!" She gradually works herself up into such a state that all she can do is make the noise "Woo!" It is a sort of awkward growl, as though a grizzly and an owl had mated, with fearful results.

There was the bus driver who decided it was fine and dandy to have PTSD flashbacks at nine in the morning. First, he kicked a war protester off of the Orange Line, where there wasn't a stop. Then, he pulled the bus over and screamed at everyone that he hadn't served his country for twenty-od years to deal with this shit, then kept driving. Two minutes later, he pulled over again. Needless to say I called the cops and ran.

A fat chick once got on with a gallon water bottle full of soda and a Tupperware full of Hershey's Kisses. I felt rather awful, but still managed to get a cell-phone picture of her and send it to everyone, because, damn. That's terrible.

There's more, alas. Much more. Hostile perfume-hawking mountebanks, a crazed woman who acts out conversations between her two personalities by taking on and off her sunglasses, depending on who's speaking, drunken men who pee on themselves, after calling you a "bitch-stupid bitch-faggot", and even the occasional adorable little kid who manages to not be a snotty little nuisance.