On the bus with me today:

- This guy who fell asleep mid-text. I saw him slumped over like this and his eyes were closed and he was doing the heavy breathing. His hand was motionless, suspended about an inch from his screen, pointing at it . . . → Read More: On the bus: Still alive]]> WooooooooOOOOOOOooooo, it sure has been a while. No promises about future blogging, but this post promises to be a winner. Mostly because the people I saw on the bus today were. Winners, that is.

On the bus with me today:

- This guy who fell asleep mid-text. I saw him slumped over like this and his eyes were closed and he was doing the heavy breathing. His hand was motionless, suspended about an inch from his screen, pointing at it as if he were still typing. I know he was texting because I saw “Hey man,” and a few other words on the screen. A few moments after I snapped this pic he woke up and finished his message.

- A candidate for Craziest Bus Guy of the semester got on downtown as I was headed to the Statesman to take an editing test. He was wearing cloth sneakers, polka-dot leggings, denim shorts, and some sort of jacket that I didn’t notice because of his incredibly gaudy pink sunglasses. (It is cloudy today and no brighter than your average lobby.) They had long corners that extended out to the sides like the ’50s glasses used to, but longer. Top it all off with a partial beard and some long scraggly hair down to his shoulders. He and his girl were talking about how they were headed to get him a phone because you have to have a phone if you want a job. He did not give any evidence or reasoning behind this assertion; rather, he backed it up with a song, which I have transcribed for you.

That is what he actually sang, perhaps in a different key, but definitely in a high, whiney falsetto. I expect one of you to record a remix of it for YouTube.

Thanks, PhD fairy.

Jerk.

- Nobody. Is it Saturday and I don’t know it?

- Finally some people start getting on. One guy walks in like he owns the place. He has square features, shaggy hair and a wild goatee. Oh, I get it! I’m an extra in a Geico commercial. (OK, so he is not a caveman. He stood up as the bus got full and a mother with . . . → Read More: On the bus: Whatstoday?]]> I forget what I’m supposed to be doing. On the bus with me today:

- Nobody. Is it Saturday and I don’t know it?

- Finally some people start getting on. One guy walks in like he owns the place. He has square features, shaggy hair and a wild goatee. Oh, I get it! I’m an extra in a Geico commercial. (OK, so he is not a caveman. He stood up as the bus got full and a mother with her two kids took his seat.)

- A girl going to nursing school, or something like that. She is reviewing notes for unit 5 in her pharmacology 2300 class. They do not teach you in nursing school that pinning your ears back with a tight do-rag is likely to cause pain by lunchtime.

- A girl with bright red hair. Her head looks like an apple with a bite taken out of it where her face is. She should wear a green hairpiece for the leaf. (One of my professors will appreciate this description because her teenage daughter wants to die her hair red.)

- Lots of runners, the people who see the bus coming and start sprinting to catch it. One lady is so relieved she made it that she cannot stop sighing, like, “WOOOOOOOooooooo!” Every other breath she is saying to the whole bus, “Did you see that? I RAN, baby, ’cause there was gonna be trouble if I didn’t catch . . . → Read More: On the bus: We are angry and relieved]]> A short one, but there are two important people I want to tell you about. On the bus with me today:

- Lots of runners, the people who see the bus coming and start sprinting to catch it. One lady is so relieved she made it that she cannot stop sighing, like, “WOOOOOOOooooooo!” Every other breath she is saying to the whole bus, “Did you see that? I RAN, baby, ’cause there was gonna be trouble if I didn’t catch that bus. But you know I caught it ’cause I fast.” After every sigh she looks around the bus to see if anyone noticed her amazing feat and is possibly a recruiter for the Olympic track team.

- A guy who is writing a mean e-mail. Or maybe just a mean guy writing an e-mail. Not sure. I don’t know if you can tell in the photo, but he has the biggest scowl on his face, with his bottom lip up under his nose and the corners of his mouth nearly touching the bottom of his jaw. He holds his phone about three inches from his nose as he furiously pecks away at his mini-keyboard. What makes this guy even funnier, and which you also may not be able to see in the photo, is that the hair on the top of his head is thinning, but there is still a circle of tight curls that runs all the way around his hairline. So it looks like he’s wearing a headband made out of his own hair with a bald spot on top. 

A guy who smells like churros sits down next to me. He is bigger than I am and could beat me up, so I am not making fun of him, just stating that I now detect the aroma of fried dough sprinkled with cinnamon, whereas before I did not. His . . . → Read More: On the bus: Hairsday]]> Well, you can’t write about ALL the crazy people on the bus. Just the ones without red hair or blue hair. Narrows it down. On the bus with me today:

A guy who smells like churros sits down next to me. He is bigger than I am and could beat me up, so I am not making fun of him, just stating that I now detect the aroma of fried dough sprinkled with cinnamon, whereas before I did not. His cell phone screen is cracked, probably because he held it too tightly in his big mitts.

One guy with long ratty hair has so much stuff with him that it takes him two trips to get it all out the door. He stumbles up to the front of the bus on his second trip to get a card from another rider (friend?) and the driver yells “back door!” He says he knows and takes another long look at his empty seat to make sure he has not left anything behind.

A woman listening to a Zune. A Zune is a portable mp3 player that nobody bought and has been discontinued. OK, so I bought a Zune, but it was a mistake and I didn’t use it for very long before selling it to someone else who also should not have bought it. The woman bobs her head and I can tell it is to the music because she keeps bobbing when the bus makes a stop.

At least five sleepers on today’s bus. I think you do not want to sleep on the bus because several silly things could happen to you. You could miss your stop. You could lean over onto the stranger next to you. Your mouth could hang open and you could drool on your shirt. You could have one of those sleep jerks where you elbow the stranger next to you. So I do not know why people sleep on the bus.

1. In case you don’t figure out that the only button that has the word “reset” in it is your best bet, we’re going to put the button’s text in bold AND show you a picture of it. Also, in case you don’t figure out that the red circle in the photo isn’t . . . → Read More: Reading between the lines]]> Here’s a sign just outside my front door by the security panel of my building. I’m going to add in the unwritten words for you:

1. In case you don’t figure out that the only button that has the word “reset” in it is your best bet, we’re going to put the button’s text in bold AND show you a picture of it. Also, in case you don’t figure out that the red circle in the photo isn’t there in real life, let us point that out to you. Also, here is an example red circle in case you need a reference (circle may not be to scale).

2. Now that you’ve located this button, you may be unsure of what you have to do. Also, in case you have short-term memory loss here is a reminder of the name of the button. Hint: push the button we’ve been talking about.

3. The “system” that you just reset should now return to normal (return to normal is another way of saying “reset”).

After you have reset the system and everything has returned to normal, the system has now been reset (reset is another way of saying “return to normal”).

- A bunch of people who think 60 degrees is cold. We’ve got sweaters, hoodies, jackets and full-on coats. People wear their hoods and beanies even while on the bus. The mothers have their children bundled up in fuzzy coats with the fur-lined hoods or covered by blankets in their car seats. No kidding. Heaven help us all survive this dreadful “cold” front . . . → Read More: On the bus: Coldsday]]> Can someone please pass the hot chocolate? It’s freezing out there. On the bus with me today:

- A bunch of people who think 60 degrees is cold. We’ve got sweaters, hoodies, jackets and full-on coats. People wear their hoods and beanies even while on the bus. The mothers have their children bundled up in fuzzy coats with the fur-lined hoods or covered by blankets in their car seats. No kidding. Heaven help us all survive this dreadful “cold” front that has lowered the high temperature to an unearthly 73 degrees.

- A woman with her hair piled up in an obelisk on the top of her head. It’s not like a skyscraper where they include the height of the antenna when measuring your height, you know.

- Someone pulls the cord to request a stop as we are about to pull in to the transfer station. Pretty sure the bus will stop there, no need to request it. Half the bus gets off and another 10 people get on.

- Everyone has maxed the ringtones today. The loudest one disturbed the whole bus by blaring a series of beeps like the garbage truck backing up. Another one has the loudest office phone bee-dul-dee-dul-deet you’ve ever heard. The lady next to me has set her phone to play a Spanish guitar jingle when she is getting a call. It plays three times while she fumbles around in her pocket trying to get it out without elbowing me in the ribs.

- The dude in the longhorns sweater, beanie and fleece gloves jumps up as someone else is headed out the door. He blows chunks all over the sidewalk. When the lady with him realizes it, she has to ask the bus driver to open the doors again so she can get out to help him. Gonna need to wash those shoes, man.

- I wish I had a picture to go with this one because you guys are not going to believe me. A guy with glasses and long grey hair that hung down over his ears had shaved off HALF his long grey beard. One side of his face was covered with stringy beard hairs about as long as your hand, and the other side was bare skin. He was only on for two stops and stayed right near the front of the bus, so I couldn’t get a decent photo. But for sure this guy is gonna be a major contender in this season’s competition for Weirdest Bus Person.

On the bus with me today:

-A tall bus driver with corn rows and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. This is what NBA players are doing these days, I guess.

-A baby ‘fro. But he got the comb up in it, so it’s legit. Also, (fake?) diamond earrings.

Update: A second short Afro gets on the bus, with the same black . . . → Read More: On the bus: Fra-eeee-day]]> It’s Fra-eee-day, Fra-eee-day, people, and I gotta make my mind up, which seat do I take?

On the bus with me today:

-A tall bus driver with corn rows and a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. This is what NBA players are doing these days, I guess.

-A baby ‘fro. But he got the comb up in it, so it’s legit. Also, (fake?) diamond earrings.

Update: A second short Afro gets on the bus, with the same black comb in it, only this guy’s is monogramed with a B for “bad.”

-All the people with wrinkly old dollar bills should be required to stand at the end of the line so they don’t make everyone wait while they fumble with their dough.

-A woman and her two adorable kids sit down in front of me. They cannot hold their little kid heads still when the bus starts and stops, so I see the little girl bonk her melon on the back of the seat a few times.

-A man in a paisley shirt and a long layered haircut that kind of splays all over the place. He may or may not have 8-tracks in the bag he’s carrying. He has the sort of lurching walk you would expect from the real-life version of Otto.

-The people in the front seat are talking about the best kind of hand cart to use when bringing home the month’s food stamp haul from the grocery store. Not making any of that up. You can get a $25 one with two wheels from Walgreens, she heard, but you have to lean it.

-Some yuppie punk in slacks who can’t stop messin’ with his iPhone, like he just got it yesterday. What’s he doing riding the bus? He’s probably writing something like “omg I’m on teh bus” to his stupid yuppie friends. Oh nope, that was just my reflection in the window.