Oh, Why Didn't You Tell Me??

(Hey there.)

This morning, worming my way onto the #36 southbound, I spied an empty seat to my left, an aisle seat. Mostly I don't care if I sit or stand, but since it was there, I took it. Within nano-seconds, I realized why it had been vacant on such a crowded bus: O' the aroma! (O' the humanity!) Of course the fellow in the seat next to me seemed oblivious to my micro-panic, my eyes as they shifted to the woman across the aisle who smirked knowingly as if to say, "Ha ha! Sucker!"

I worried that like some kind of airborne virus, the stench would somehow adhere to me, making me look like the unwashed culprit. I sat for a few more stops until we came closer to my exit. Someone immediately snapped up the vacant seat. (Ha ha! Sucker!)

When I lived in New York, I remember watching as a man working at one of the subway newsstands sprayed Lysol directly onto the huge, rasta-haired man with the poncho. The funny thing was that, like most hulking creatures in movies, the poncho'd one failed to react to the disinfectant flying at his face and body. He simply kept looking on at "Barely Legal" et al. (Homeless or not, a man's got needs, ya know...)

I don't know why I take the bus more often than the train. Sometimes the slow, annoying pace of the bus suits my mood, as in "I'll get there when I get there..."

I really should take the EL more. I really should.

X.