Week of 11/28/2011

11/28-present

The week started off uneventful. I got a ride Monday morning but took the bus home that evening. Everything was normal Tuesday and Wednesday morning. People were getting on and off the bus like drones. The same people getting to the same places day by day.

I did catch my fellow marine on the ride home Tuesday evening and we talked a bit and swapped some stories.

Wednesday evening was a little different. I was waiting for the Westbound and low and behold the guy who was on drugs and racist showed up again. He was walking with a cane (barely) and I could tell he was lit like a candle. He almost fell to the ground when he tried to sit down but somehow miraculously did not. He was sitting there swaying and mumbling something I could not make out. Then he looked at me and said something which I could not make out. I thought he was asking me for money and almost gave him my standard reply (I don’t give out money). Instead, I said “excuse me?” And the man replied a little more wide eyed “you got any food?” I immediately went down on one knee and said “sure”. I had a small bag of pretzels with peanut butter in them and another small bag of trail mix. I asked the man which one he wanted or if he wanted them both. He told me he had to take the pretzels because he did not have very many teeth so I gave them to him and he thanked me.

I never hesitate when people are hungry. I will not give people money, but I will buy them or give them food if they ask.

The next morning I got on the bus and a bus driver I had never seen before was driving. He was a large Caucasian bald man with an old school ZZ top red/yellow beard with no mustache. I shot him a good morning and he acknowledged with “how’s it going?”

The tall mentally ill man that I see sometimes on the bus was behind me getting on the bus. He sat in the front and started to ramble about how something was a “waste of nail polish”. A couple of stops up the bus driver (who was flying down the street) halted at a stop for a few minutes most likely he was ahead of schedule. As we sat there the mentally ill tall man got off the bus and grabbed a jacket that did not seem to belong to anyone and was placed on a trash can. He then got back on the bus and stared at the jacket for a while. Wonder what was going on in that head.

The bus was relatively empty as I sat in the back and listened to morning news. I arrived at work 20 minutes early unscathed.