Monday, October 23, 2006

The city bus is a freakshow...

I just started riding the Milwaukee city bus (for those of you from old-school Milwaukee, the "green machine") to and from campus, not necessarily for environmental reasons, but more because I got sick of the clusterf*ck that is parking at UWM.

Have you ever actually taken a good look around this piece of public transportation? I have witnessed enough of the craziest conversations, facial expressions and bodily noises on my short trips to last me a lifetime.

For example, today as I sat pretending to stare out the window while I was actually staring at everyone across from me while trying not to make eye contact with anyone, some dude decides to park himself right next to me (mind you, there are about 800 other empty seats on the bus at this time) and proceeds to have a conversation with himself plus at least 2 other imaginary friends in varying degrees of volume about skateboarders and shrimp cocktail.

Then the guy across from me with an abnormally pronounced underbite and a brow ridge from the Paleolithic Era answers his mobile phone so loudly that the rest of the passengers turn around to see where the noise is coming from. He goes on to berate some poor telemarketer that made the unfortunate mistake of calling Neanderthal man while he was on the bus. Then, while grunting, he closes his phone by slamming it against his aforementioned brow ridge. No joke.

Finally, just before I get off the bus, the high school kid that is sitting on the other side of me blasting his I-Pod decides that he has to sneeze. Not just one of those little, my-nose-is-itchy sneezes but a full-blown, I don't have time to cover my mouth, tuberculosis-inducing blast. Yep, right on my arm. And I swear I felt droplets on my cheek.

This is not to say that there aren't other, relatively normal people that ride the bus everyday. I'm sure there are, bonding together silently while the crazies wreak havoc around us. You should really try it sometime...it gives you a whole new perspective on society and much more reassurance that you're not as weird as you thought.