Tales From The 83L
The 83L is the bus route I take to and from work. I’d like to share two stories from the route with you. One I call “Scotch Tape Lady”. The other I call “I Gots Standards”.
Scotch Tape Lady
The other week I was on my way home and a seemingly normal looking lady sits down across from me. She starts digging through her really large purse. After almost a minute of digging she finds what she’s looking for and pulls it out… A scotch tape dispenser.
She snaps off an inch long strip, stands up, turns towards the front of the bus and stares. She’s bracing herself and concentrating ahead of her, like she’s looking in a mirror. And no, there is no mirror. Then she slowly brings her hand holding the scotch tape up to her glasses. Closer. Closer. Closer. Slowly. Then, *snap*, it’s on her right lens. She then repeats the process with her left lens.
It was obviously a task that required a lot of precision. That tape had to be at just the right spot on both of her lenses.
So now that she’s all scotch tapped up, she sits down. And she sits there until her stop comes up. Just sitting there like it’s perfectly normal to have scotch tape on her glasses. Like what she just went through was something any sane woman with glasses might go through.
I Gots Standards
Today on my bus ride home a skinny white trash looking young guy sits across from me next to his friend, a not-so-skinny white trash looking young guy. They both have tattoos everywhere. The skinny one has two rather new looking ones on his hands. One says “Mile”. The other… “High”.
So this skinny guy, Mile High, he sits down and rolls up his baggy pants real high. He whips out a tube of ben-gay. And yep… he lathers up. When he finishes he pulls his pant legs back down and admires his new tattoos for a bit.
Mile High’s friend gets a phone call. I missed most of the call due to Dashboard Confessional on my iPod. Resisting the urge to belt out the lyrics with Chris Carrabba, I was just watching the funny duo. But, fortunately, there was a break in the music and I got to hear this from Mr. Mile High:
Mile High turns to his friend on the phone and he says, “Hey, tell her her friend better be good lookin’. I gots standards.”
February 26th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
These kinds of stories are what I missed about emailing you all of the time. Classic!