The Bus Crazies Ate My Soul

Caution! Upcoming rant on: The Crazies on the Bus.

This evening, on my ride home from Starbucks, I thought I was going to die, either from excess amounts of insanity seeping into my brain, or from the crazies just bludgeoning me to death. Here's my tally of the obvious insanos, although I'm sure there were more:

Two seats up: Smile Woman
Every three seconds or so, she would turn to someone around her and smile this gigantic, Cheshire Cat, "I'm going to kill you, it makes me so happy, and there is nothing you can do about it" smile. At one point, I became the victim. I felt her smile away my thoughts out of a scary leech-alien horror flick. She also probably noticed my "you are the strangest woman on the planet" face. Either way, she didn't smile me to death again.

One seat back: Deep Voice Tapper Man
As part of my background noise, I had a very deep-voiced man muttering the most absolutely random things.
"I bought the carpenter beetle flooding."
"My toe went that."
"Hello? Hello? Hello? No."
"But then I bumble yes."
I swear on my soul. Aside from the mutterings every five minutes, he also tapped on my seat with his hand the entire ride. We're not talking about normal, now-and-then, "tap, tap, tap" action. We're talking "tap, taptaptapTAPTAPTAP... tap" insanity. I kept half-turning around, doing that "quit it" look without looking directly at him, but he didn't get it. I didn't want to look right at him because I noticed, in my peripheral vision, that he was a ginormous fat man, so I let him tap and mumble about his floods. Maybe he's the next Noah and won't save me now that I blogged about his epiphany. Oh well.

Back of the bus: The Morbid Crew
There were three or four people at the very back of the bus (I didn't turn around to take a toll of how many exactly) that went on and on about death. First it was what method of suicide would be "most fun" or "least painful". One woman thought sleeping pills, another thought hanging would do the trick and show everyone that they meant it. I thought any way possible as long as it was fast and allowed me to stop listening to this the entire trip home. Then they moved on to being buried alive. I swear to anyone you want me to swear to. Being buried alive. One guy was saying "If I woke up, and I was buried alive, I wouldn't put up with that shit! I'd claw my way out! No fuckin' way they're gonna do that to me!" The other bunch were like "Fuck ya, man!" as if he just said something great and courageous. Um, hello? Crazy digging man? If by some miracle you clawed your way through a coffin, the earth would cave in and crush you. Moron. And who would bother going to the trouble of burying a Newfie hick alive anyway? No one, that's who.

Four seats up: Cletis
This man actually did the Cletis laugh. For those of you who do not watch The Simpsons, Cletis is the epitome of hick, and has this ridiculous "H'yuck" laugh. The guy at the front of the bus did it at least five times. It was unbelievable. He also kept staring at people that were further back on the bus than he was, which, for those of you who are bad at perspective, is everyone. We, as the bunch who are facing forward, really have nowhere to look except forward, so it is extremely awkward when a person at the front gawks at you for twenty seconds. If you are a backwards-starer, stop it.

One seat up: "Oh Suzanna" Smelly Whistle Man
Okay - this one's a doozy, if doozy is a word, which my spellcheck is telling me it isn't. First of all, this guy smelled like a mix of wet cardboard, wet dog, and musty sweatsock vomit. I don't really understand it, but it was vile, to the point where I rode much of the trip just smelling my hand. You don't realize how good your skin smells until you have to smell wet cardboard dog must barf sweatsocks. Trust me. On top of the smell (and the horrible way he was dressed - some brown coat from 1981 with a gigantic eagle-vulture on the back), he was whistling "Oh Suzanna" over and over. Now, it gets worse than that. He would put extra beats into the lyrics, thus disallowing my brain to hum along and tune out any of this insanity. Let me demonstrate, using the lyrics of that wonderful tune that I oh-so-want to hear again, "Oh Suzanna".

It rained all night, the day I left
The weather it it it it it it it it it was dry.
The sun so hot, I I I I I I froze to death,
Suzanna don't you cry.
Oh, Suz-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-AAAAAAAAAAA-nna!

Three seats back, opposite row: Poop Boy and his "Parent?"
This little boy of possibly five years old smelled manure. Great for him. He says to his mom, or to his older woman sitting next to him, "I smell cow poo!" His woman, who is chatting on her cell phone about "he did this" and "NO FUCKING WAY!" completely ignores him. Again: "I smell cow poo!" Nothing. "I smell cow poo!" "He did what!?" "I smell cow poo!" "Well he so deserves it! Fuckin' bastard, hey?" "I smell cow poo!" Ya. They got off after about ten minutes. That was a fun ten minutes. I think I'll have about ten years of therapy in response to those ten minutes. Hopefully they're as fun as the ten minutes were. I can only dream.

Four seats up, opposite row: The Next-Generation Crazy
Lastly, there was a lone teenage boy at the front of the bus who, by all standards written in this rant, make him the youngest and thus next generation insano created to drive me to type so hard my fingers bleed. At first, he looked fairly normal. Ugly clothes (but that's normal in glorious Newfoundland - fashion sense hasn't traveled overseas yet), baseball cap, but otherwise, a normal looking kid of about sixteen. Then his cell phone rings. I thought scrambled television had transformed and was eating our bus. It sounded like it could have been a song, but was so staticky and distorted and loud that it just sounded like eight fifty-year-old televisions making love on the wrong channels. Then he chatted to his girlfriend and, to impress the fun morons around him, including Cletis, he would put the phone down while she talked and give his phone the finger. Yeah, classy times on the bus for me. This went on for at least two minutes until he caught me staring at him and give him the "oh my good Jebus" face and he hung up. Kids grow up into crazies so fast these days.

So, ladies and gentlemen, if you see crazy people on the bus, do us all a favour and give them a dirty look. Maybe they'll hang up the phone on crazy and leave us all the hell alone.

--Jam

PS: I swore on my soul earlier but I really can't do that anymore. The crazies on the bus ate it, so I'll swear on your soul instead.