“GOOD MOENING.” A tiny but loud Asian woman shouts at me as she waves a Metro in my face. “Oh, I’ve already got one, but thanks!” I say more cheerfully than I feel this early in the morning. She looks down at the 24 Hours in my hand, grunts, and pushes past me to the next groggy commuter in closest proximity to me. “GOOD MOENING!” she shouts even more loudly at a wrinkly old man, who I’m certain either pooped himself or had a heart attack from fright.
I round the corner to the bus stop and am met by three massive lines curving down the street and into the Skytrain station. “Fucking students,” I grumble as I take my spot in line, juggling my chai, umbrella and soggy newspaper. A middle-aged man wearing Crocs, coke-bottle glasses and a pilot hat stares at me while he picks his nose absentmindedly. I stick my tongue out at him; he doesn’t even blink, his finger still jammed incredibly far up his nostril. He probably damaged his brain that way, I think to myself.
Two busses come and go before I’m even close to the front of the line. Finally, I’m on, along with around 80 other passengers, and we all cram ourselves in while exchanging looks that say, “I’m on my way to a job I fucking detest,” and, “Sorry I just stuck my umbrella up your bum.” Amazingly, I’m able to score a seat. But not 30 seconds later the wrinkly old pooped-in-pants man walks toward me, looking desperate for somewhere to park his soiled bum. “You can sit here,” I tell him, and he looks as though I’ve just offered him a mansion and a hefty sum of money rather than a less-than-comfortable bus seat. Poor guy, I think, as I get up and watch him shuffle toward me, struggling to push through the mass of commuters who either will not or cannot budge.
I’ve got the flu, and I’m not thrilled about being packed into this bus that looks like a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. I try to meditate into a state of quiet patience so that I don’t barf all over the annoying but innocent commuters, and I think I’m going to be okay, until I look down and notice a man who looks scarily close to death rubbing his scabby face and scratching his nearly hairless head, and the young woman beside him holding a plastic bag in one hand and covering her mouth with the other while she, too, tries not to vomit.
I hear some guy pitch a fit behind me and I notice he’s dropping an awful lot of f-bombs, which piques my curiosity. I tune in and realize he’s bitching out a little old lady. “Learn fucking English if yer gonna live in Canada,” he snarls. He is the freakiest looking little prick I’ve ever seen, his eyebrows extending diagonally upward with no arch or any kind of curvature (that’s a tell-tale sign of crazy, FYI) and his greasy brown mushroom cut hair parted in the middle and slicked to the sides of his face. There is terror in his beady eyes, straight up psychosis, and he shouts, “I would learn fucking Chinese if I was gunna go to Japan! Learn fucking English, you stupid bitch!” I am appalled both by his belligerence and flagrant stupidity and I quickly think up something sufficiently bitchy and valiant to throw back at him, but just as I’m about to do so, I look back and see him stepping off the bus. The second most irritating thing about this moron behind his ridiculous bullying and just ahead of his creepy face was that I heard the little old lady reply to him, kindly, even, and her English was perfect.
I finally reach the halfway point of my commute and step off the bus, somewhat relieved, but also dreading the remainder of my trip to work. I walk into the Skytrain station and notice a new sign by the stairs with a picture above some text that is too small to read: it appears to be a pervert grabbing some girl’s ass. I get closer and realize it’s supposed to be a pickpocket pickpocketing.
Ass grab
My thoughts are interrupted and I almost throw my chai into the air as a booming robot voice hollers at the sleepy commuters, “Please keep an eye out for any suspicious behavior and immediately report it to your nearest Skytrain attendant.”
My heart rate has almost slowed to a normal pace when the robot voice returns, still far louder than it needs to be: “Please stand well clear of the platform edge and allow passengers to get off the train before you board.” Ah, the robot is British, but without the sweet accent. Rip off. As usual, more than a few people crowd the doors as they open, totally ignoring the polite robot’s requests and making it extremely difficult for people to exit the train. This pisses me off to no end, and I really don’t think it should even be necessary for a robot to remind us of things that should be common sense. Then again, I’m starting to lose my faith in the existence of Common Sense; I’m almost certain it’s a myth.
I get on the train and am lucky enough to get a seat, or so I think. At the next stop, an interesting-looking little person gets on the train. She (at least I’m fairly sure it’s a she) is short and squat but without the handle and the spout and with a bright green suitcase and a crazy hairdo. “MOOOOVE! I NEED TO SIT DOOOWN! MOOOOVE!” she hollers as she literally tosses people aside and makes a mad dash for the seat beside me. Oh shit. It doesn’t take me long to figure out that my lovely train neighbor has special needs, including the need for volume control. She looks right at me, wide-eyed and bushy-tailedhaired, and joyfully asks, “Is that one a’ dose pod tingies?” pointing at my iPod, my only means of distancing myself from the public transit crazies. “Yeah it is,” I reply, being pleasant but not offering too much. I can just tell that I don’t want to get this one started or I’ll never get off the train. “Whaddarya listening to?!” she asks, still emphatic but almost incomprehensible. “It’s Modest Mouse,” I say, with a bit of a smile this time. She’s just too hilarious, and I’m finding it difficult to be disinterested in this anomaly of a human being. “Oh. Have you hearda dat one song? It’s by dat one guy….WHAT’S DAT BLACK GUY? Not Beyonce…” she trails off, deep in thought. I hear several people giggle at this, and I’m right with them. It’s not that we’re laughing at her in a malevolent way, it’s just that she’s fucking hilarious without meaning to be, which is kind of awesome. I reach my stop and for once I am almost hesitant to get off the train. The public transit crazies are always amusing but usually rather irritating; this one was special, and I wanted more. I reluctantly stand up, wave goodbye to my quirky transit neighbor and push my way through the group of douche bags crowding the open doors.
