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On Saturday I needed to do some work and because Brigitte stole my car to go to Wisconsin, I had to take the train. The train ride was mostly uneventful, save one enterprising man who wanted to sell me cigarettes. I did not want to buy any, so the interaction was brief. However, upon deboarding the train things got a bit more interesting. I will enumerate:
1) When I got up the stairs to the station I had the pleasant experience of seeing the bus pulling away from the stop across the street. This made me pretty unhappy because, as discussed in a previous missive CTA buses operate on what could best be called 'no schedule at all,' and, as enumerated in that post, I probably wouldn't see another bus for half an hour. And, as my parents would be able to tell you, standing on the Dan Ryan overpass is not a great place to be standing as it is a massive wide open area with cars flying by beneath you, thereby leading to not smelling great and being ~15 degrees cooler than the rest of the city because the expressway makes its own horrid windchill. They can also verify how long you may have to wait for the bus. (Keep this in mind for a future blog where I discuss the places where cabs should clearly be hanging out but never seem to be.) I attempted to run to catch the bus, but it was to no avail.
2) Another patron also tried to run to catch the bus, but it was to even less avail as he was wearing what could best be called anti-shorts. These are pants that start roughly where your average short leg would stop. They are resistant to no movement whatsoever and prone to falling off of the mid-thighs they are precariously worn on, so if one is to move in them he must grab them by the side or preferably the crotchal region. Also, because they are worn so low they do not allow normal movement of the legs, thereby inducing a very un-thug-like waddle, especially when rapid translocation is attempted. But rapidly waddle he did, my fellow patron. He emitted a couple curses and various unintelligible vagary when he could not catch the bus, then he came to reposition his pants near me. I noticed at this point that this fellow had two tear drop tattoos under his right eye. In addition to the anti-shorts he was wearing a scowl, a very large brown sweatshirt- despite not being a very large fellow- and basically an Elmer Fudd cap, except without the brown front panel. It was sitting way up on his head and I'm pretty sure it had ear flaps!
3) Some short time later a woman crossed the street. She was dressed smartly in lime green sweatshirt and pants with a large brown coat over them. Greenie had on makeup and had a book and some papers under her arm. As Greenie crossed the street, Elmer Waddle asked her if she could see a bus coming down the street. She kind of looked, didn't say anything, but approached Elmer. She then fiddled about in her papers, retrieved a small piece of notepaper, and attempted to hand it to him. He did not accept, I presume because he knew that his anti-shorts would fall off if he added the weight of even a small piece of paper to their already precarious non-hip-resting state. Greenie then proceeded to hand out small, blank note paper to everyone else at the stop. I took my piece:
and thanked her. She then attempted to give her gift to Elmer again, but since she knew he couldn't take his hand off his pants to accept it she placed it very delicately at his feet. He then stepped on the paper, dragged his foot along the pavement, and said, "I don't know what kind of voodoo shit you got there lady, but I don't want none." Greenie then scampered down the street, hung out at the corner for a while looking around- long enough for her walk signal to turn to don't walk- then crossed the street (yes, on a do not walk), and walked down a couple stops where she eventually caught the bus that came circa five mins after this episode. Two stops after she got on the bus, three young ladies got on. She interrupted their conversation: "Excuse me would you like a piece of paper?" To which they said, "OK" and then giggled about it a little bit, but they kind of made it seem like they were just giggling so it wasn't too awkward.The point here: sadly, some people in this city are crazies.
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Today the Stupendous Brigitte and I went to lunch together. On the way to and from lunch we walked past a number of people talking on their cell phones. Good for them and their communciations. I think it is a great feat that people can stay connected anywhere in the world. Though of course there are some downsides to this- how can today's children have random and disjointed experiences of wonder?- I nonetheless believe it a magnificent application of technology for the general sake of convenience, production, and connectivity.
The point here: um, modern technology exists and people have it?
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To synthesize: some people are crazy, and some people talk on cell phones. More specifically, some people do their cell phone talkin' via newage Star Trekian bluetooth headphones and the like. My problem is that this causes me problems disentangling parts 1 and 2. On the walk to lunch today a small oriental girl was talking a million miles an hour while walking by herself. She may likely have been wearing a bluetooth under her hood and talking on her phone. Or she may have been very crazy.
And so my plea: can we make it national law that bluetooth phones come equiped with some sort of head-top light device so everyone can tell when someone is on the phone? Or at least something that lights up the chin? Or nostrils?
I know I'm not the first to bring this up. People have talked about how strange it is to have someone talking to you only to realize they're talking on the phone. For that matter there's a commercial about this. But I wish to express my desires for the purposes of my own mental well-being and safety. Of course, the bluetooth ones are probably more likely to actually be any kind of threat to me, but at least this light system would provide me a way of classifying which are which, so that in reports I can say, "A crazy person struck me with a salami" or "A bluetooth person ran me over with their car while typing on their PDA and listening to NPR while doing her nails and keeping an eye on the kids."
I need some way to know who the crazies are. They're not always handing out scraps of blank paper.
