Three Amigos

1.
I got on the bus to work. Right away I noticed a guy talking in an annoying pattern that told me he was talking to himself. He was in his upper 40s, I'd guess, and didn't look homeless. Just talking to himself in that bitter I'm-crazy-and-the-world's-stupid way that I've seen many times. These losers will usually be mumbling conservative propaganda or make references to 1970s TV shows. You either know who I'm talking about or you don't. This kind of guy will make eye contact with everyone and everybody will turn away and try their best to ignore him. I always stare right at these guys and they will usually avoid eye contact with me. Something in my being instinctively loathes them.

Anyway, I had my ear buds out, expecting trouble, or maybe just looking for a fight because it was too early in the morning. I was near the back door, and there was a girl standing there who was clearly headed to the school I work at. I didn't know the girl, but most of the kids that ride that bus are going to my school. They're hoody kids, but I still feel like they're "my" kids.

So crazy talk-to-himself guy stood up to get off the bus and passed by this girl. I think he may have bumped her backpack, and he said to her, "Why you blocking the door? You know why? 'Cause you're a cunt." Then he repeated it: "You know why? 'Cause you're a cunt." The girl moved away from him.

Something in me must have snapped, because I stood up and yelled at him, "Get the FUCK off the bus!"

"What?"

"GET THE FUCK OFF THE BUS!" I yelled again.

He started stepping off the bus. "You know what?" he said.

Oh no. He better not have a gun in his pocket.

"GET THE FUCK OFF!" I yelled. I could feel crazy adrenaline going through me.

Then he did something weird. He was off the bus, in the street now, and he tossed something on the stairs of the bus. I looked and it was a broken pair of glasses without lenses. He didn't throw them, either. He just kind of limply tossed them. Hella weird.

The doors closed and the bus drove on. I sat back down, shaking a little. I don't know where all that anger came from, but for the rest of the day I regretted not beating the crap out of that guy.

Oh, and this was on a totally full bus.


2.
After a crazy day of standardized testing, I headed up the hill to a park to eat my lunch. As I walked along, this Hispanic guy dressed like a painter seemed cheerful so I said, "Hi, how's it going?"

"So far so good," he said.

I nodded, not slowing my pace. But he approached me like a used car salesman and said, "You know why I say 'So far so good'? Are you Irish?"

"A little," I said.

"I'm from Buenos Aires, and I have an Irish friend. He told me this joke about a guy who is falling off the Empire State Building and as he's falling down a window washer asks him, 'How's it going?' and he replies -"

"So far so good."

"Yes!"

I'd heard it already.

And I didn't eat my lunch at the park because they were doing construction that was too loud so I ate on the bench in front of Cost Plus, pondering the ecological footprint of importing water from Fiji for Marina housewives.


3.
At Trader Joe's I talked with the clerk who said he was reading Don Quixote and said he doesn't like it when movies are made of books he likes (such as Anne Rice's books) and I said that Don Quixote is cursed to never be completed as a major motion picture. Orson Welles and Terry Gilliam both tried and failed.

"I just hope there isn't a day when movies go beyond the limits of our imagination," he said.

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Like, when movies can do things that our imagination can't."

I thought about this for a while, and this doesn't make sense in my conception of imagination. I think that if your mind can apprehend something then it can reproduce it in the imagination. I imagine "imagination" as a bloblike memory potentiality generator web that extends all directions into infinity. It encompasses all. Even U2 3D.

And honestly, movies are a poor substitute for reality.