While waiting for a severely delayed bus this morning, I turned to the man standing next to me in the queue and asked the following question:
"Do you actually have some kind of mental or psychological disorder?"
I agree that, taken out of context, this might have sounded a little unkind - perhaps even cruel. you'd be forgiven for thinking I'd based this query on observance alone. But five seconds before that, he'd asked me for the NINTH time (I'd started a mental count after the fourth) if I was waiting for the No.24.
The ninth time.
First few times I nodded and said 'yes'. I'm not a fucking monster, even if subhuman sows in overstretched pink sweatpants and sovereign rings point me out on the bus to their semi-feral spawn as 'the man who'll come and take them away if they don't behave.' Yeah, that's happened plenty. Usually, I'll suffice by snarling at the bloated bitch in question for a second or two, ensuring she shuts her fat mouth for the rest of the journey. The one time I did snap, I informed both the mother and her snotty, venomous little prick of a child I'd slit her from throat to gut, stuff the child inside, and sew her back up.
And alright, I've been chided before for threatening dismemberment in the workplace. But you spend 20 minutes sweeping up a huge mound of lint only to have some vacuous trout come stomping through your pile sending it everywhere, and see how you react. It wasn't as if I was really gonna go through with it. I don't have a chest freezer, for one thing.
So anyway, back to the bus stop. After the first three times or so of answering the same question in the space of as many minutes, I'm all out of polite. Next time he asks me, I give him my best blank stare and say 'No.' - hoping this might send some kind of blatant message that I'm being deliberately sarcastic, thereby ceasing this idiotic dialogue (I also began eyeing the earphones of the schoolgirl in front of him, wondering how I could purloin them without punching her out first). But even my blatant u-turn doesn't register with this guy.
Fifth time he asks me, this happens:
"You waiting for the 24 are you, mate?"
"Nope. I've got to stand here to make the queue longer."
"Oh. 24 I want. Wonder where it's got to?"
By this point, a woman with a loud St-Trinians-schoolmistress-type voice two behind me is telling the staunch Irish Catholic grandmother next to her how she's done so much travelling in her life because she 'used to be a dancer'. I turned round to check her out, naturally - resolving there and then to book a hearing test - because I clearly heard the word 'dancer' when she obviously must have said 'mutant baked-potato beast.' I notice the line's getting seriously long now, and I'm thinking that I'm gonna end up sitting near to, or (fuck forbid) next to, my new best friend. I'm trying to work out the best way of stalling the driver so I can gauge where Captain Shitbrains is gonna sit and give myself at least a three-row clearance area, when he asks again:
"It's the 24 you want mate, is it?"
I'm just ignoring him now, and focusing my mental processing power on stealing that girl's headphones with the least amount of fuss. Attempt number 7:
"Waiting for the 24, mate? I want the 24. Wonder where that's got to then. Late it is."
So OK. I'm figuring that maybe this guy might not be all there. He's not visibly drooling or anything, but I'm looking round for the carer. Holy shit, here comes a 24....but it's going in the opposite direction. We're mid-route, so buses come in and leave both ways. This fact has not registered with my new friend. As it passes our stand and heads over to the other side of the station, he's just about to head over and jump on it. I know I've got karma in the bank after Saturday night (see previous blog post) but oh fuck. I'll regret this, I know it...
"Wrong bus, fella. That's going the other way."
"That's the 24, that's the one I want."
"You want to go to X?"
"No, I want Y. That's the 24."
"It's the wrong 24. This is the stand you want. That one goes to X."
"Oh. Are you waiting for the 24 as well then?"
Weird what comes to mind in moments like these, though. Here's what came to mine:
WWJD? What would Jebus do?
Punch this guy in the throat, if he had any sense. Me, I'm just about ready to up and leave the queue. Someone else can babysit this fuckronaut. The baked-potato beast and Mrs. Doyle are still banging on about something or other behind me - something about keyhole surgery on bats, from what I could overhear, and now this whole magical tableaux has been enhanced by a couple of Greggs Groupies in white trackies and cheap gold. Synchronized prams, Croydon facelifts, the usual sketch. Their mastery of language is quite exquisite, as one of them relates an in-depth conversation she had with a boy who was an ex of some girl her cousin was shagging. The other stands there, slack-jawed and nodding. I shall attempt to emulate their discourse thusly:
"And I was like and he was like and I was like and he was like and fucking I was like and he was fucking like fuck off oh my fucking god I was like yeah and he was like yeah fuck off I was like fuck you and he was like and I was like...."
Here comes another 24. Again, wrong direction. It's clear there's a hold-up. A crash, road closure or something that's stopping them coming in from the other side. Again he spots it. This time his tiny brain remembers the events of five minutes ago and he looks at me, expecting...fuck, I have no idea. Validation? A biscuit? A pat and ruffled hair? Who knows with this guy. But before I have a chance to reassure him that this isn't the bus he's looking for (like some kind of fucking bus Jedi), he hits me for the ninth time:
"You want the 24, mate?"
"Do you actually have some kind of mental or psychological disorder, man?"
"What?"
Fuck it, I've had enough. And here comes the 21 three bays down. It's not the 24, but it'll go to the same stop I need. I'm done.
And with that, I pick up my backpack and walk away. I pray to whatever deities may be listening that I'm the only one with enough common sense to get aboard this bus, and as it pulls away and I'm skimming a fresh copy of the daily free paper, I see the gawking faces of the other people in the queue as they spot me going past.
What, you want a moral? tough.
JH
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