HOME
MAY
Previous: 5/30/05: The mustard is
off the hot dog, you big corn fed mule you
Next: 6/1/05: Crazies
|
It's almost June and I'm tired. 2005 has been a long year and I expect it's going to get longer. Funny how people have no problem wishing a day would end, but when it comes to trying to get to the end of a whole year, that seems nuts, right? I mean, that's a lot of wasted time, a year. But shouldn't each day be treated as precious in its own right? A chance to turn around a run of bad luck or maybe call up an old friend. Or just appreciate the fact that you're alive and breathing free air and you can drink as much soda as you please. I am going to apply a sense of grateful enthusiasm to every hour I get on this earth from here on out.
In the years of some people's lord 1996 and 1997, I spent a whole lot of time riding the bus.* My girlfriend (now wife) had moved to Boston for graduate school, and I rode Peter Pan/Bonanza/Greyhound just about every single weekend to go see her. Bus travel has long been the subject of widespread ridicule, and with good reason. It's the worst way to get anywhere. Here's a brief list of people you'll meet while traveling by bus: -those too poor to fly, drive, or take the train (see me,
1996-97) That's about it. The seats are uncomfortable, the bathroom smell eventually overpowers the entire bus, there's always an asshole gabbing on his cell phone. It takes a long time to get from one place to another, especially if the weather gets messy. If you manage to find that elusive hour of sleep, you inevitably wake up with a stiff neck that lasts for three days. One time when I was riding the bus -- and I can't recall if it was the Boston-NYC bus, I guess it was but it feels more like it was someplace in the Midwest -- there was a teenage girl, maybe 16, in the row behind me. It was snowy and bitter cold outside, and the night was extremely dark; from the bus window the world looked like as lonely and desolate as the surface of the moon. This young girl was talking to another woman, maybe 25, and I overheard their entire conversation. The younger girl was moving to a new city to start her life over. She had an abusive stepfather and her first-ever boyfriend had betrayed her and she had a weight problem and her mother had died and now she was on her own with nothing in the world to her name except an oversized duffel bag. She didn't know anybody in her new city, she said, but anything was better than staying in her town even one more day.. Her story was especially poignant because she told it without a trace of self-pity. It was all very matter-of-fact. Life deals you bad blow after bad blow. You get up, you roll on. She somehow managed to sound completely optimistic about the next stage of her life. Completely naive and full of courage. She may have been the sweetest girl in the whole world. Sometimes I think about her and I wonder if she made it. Where did she stay those first few nights? Who looks out for people like that? I considered giving her my phone number just in case she got in an emergency, and I probably should have, but 27 year-old men who give their phone numbers to 16 year-old girls on the bus are a group I really didn't want to belong to. In her honor I will march forward into the lovely month of June with an attitude so positive it'd make Tony Robbins blush. My problems are nothing and my opportunities are essentially limitless. I hope you made it, poor little girl. Whodat (#14) with the hat on? And whodat? (#15) 12 points each, you may answer immediately. * I am talking about real long-distance bus travel, not commuter buses or city buses or that type of thing. Those are generally OK. |
