Under the bus

Sometimes the best things are stored under bus seats. There's the usual trash: discarded ketchup packets, ripped up receipts, a piece of gum adhered to the tacky blue fabric. Pretty standard stuff. But every once and a while, you'll come across something really good. Once, I found an entire camping tent. A whole tent just hanging out beneath my seat. It made me wonder what could be in the lost and found box at the main office of the bus system. Hell, there's probably a whole room of stuff. I imagine it to be full of things like strollers, rings, purses, cell phones, and umbrellas. Lord, I'm sure they have a while ROOM full of umbrellas. Black ones, ones with patterns, child sized ones, any umbrella you could think of, I'm sure they had it. I bet they could furnish enough umbrellas to provide props for Singing in the Rain 18 times.

On the bus one Thursday, I sat behind two war veterans talking about when they were enlisted and why Uncle Sam owed them 10 times the amount they were given. I did my best not to listen. Even though my brother is in the army, I just can't bring myself to support anything to do with warfare. I hate everything about it: the violence, the guns, the hatred.

While I was listening to the two men talk I realized two things: 1) If you put your headphones on but down turn on the music, no one realizes you're listening to them. And 2) anyone that openly talks to strangers on public transportation are liars. The man directly in front of me was telling the other about how he did most of his acid trips in Vietnam and that's the only way he made it through. But after the war, he was at St. Thomas University with a press pass because he worked for a local newspaper and that's where he met Jimmy Hendrix. It but it wasn't until after he was done telling a story of how he used to get high with "Jim" all the time, that he mentioned that he attended St. Thomas an thats where he really got his press pass, working for the campus newspaper. The other man jut smiled and gave him the benefit of the doubt. Meanwhile, I was questioning if he even was in the military at all. Then he stepped on my foot and I decided he had a death wish...all liars have a death wish, don't they?