Whoa Nelly, Public Transportation!

Each day that I go into work I take about four buses to make it into work. I take four because even though it's four different buses it's faster then some of the ways which only take two. I have about a one hour commute in the night and morning taking four buses. When you take the bus you tend to see all kinds of different people, but for some reason when I'm on the 28 bus from Dudley Station to Mattapan Station, there are a more interesting cast of characters then any other bus. Let me explain with two instances in the past week.

The first comes from sunday night, I was on the phone with my good friend Freda, and I walked onto the bus, I was sitting down as a mexican man roughly 25 years of age bumped into me and started rambling in spanish very loudly. I sat down and put my feet up on the next chair so that he couldn't sit next to me but he sat in the chair across the walkway. As the bus was going he was staring at me the entire time and was non stop talking in Spanish. I mean this guy didn't take time to breathe. After a while I knew I had to do something because he was staring right at me the entire time. Finally I told Freda to hold on, I put my phone down and I looked at the man and said, "No Habla Espanol." His eyes widened, and he looked as if I had taken his entire family heritage and had desecrated it for all to see. His speech became about three times louder, he started pointing his finger at me and his face looked like he was ready to pull out a knife. I slowly got to my feet and got to the other side of the bus but the guy would not stop talking and he kept looking back at me and pointing. Finally at some stop he got off the bus, still talking and yelling, he never stopped talking except for the split second after I told him I didn't speak Spanish.

Today while waiting for the bus this guy passed me as I was sitting down, he was listening to his cd player and dancing all over the street. We got on the bus and I sat near the back when this guy came over and started singing along to his cd player, almost yelling it he said, "Pimps and Hoes, Back up yo!" Well while this is happening this lady is sitting across from me, she laughs at him doing this and then looks at me seriously, I've got my headphones on and I wasn't really paying any attention. Well she suddenly opens up her wallet and pulls out a dollar bill and extends it to me, I shake my head no but she looks insistent that I take it, so I do, then she goes back into her wallet, pulls out four pennies and gives those to me too. Then that was her stop and she got off the bus, I still have no idea why she gave me the money. So back to the man with the cd player, he takes her spot on the bus and looks at me and says, "Hey you look like Larry Bird." Thanks I say, then he goes back to his song, and sings along again, the best part was when he pulled out his beer in a bag, drank it, put it back then sang, "I'm fryin' my dough and puttin' it on the grill." Then he made motions of himself taking meat and putting it on the grill and he made sizzling sounds. He kept singing to his songs which had some very interesting lyrics from what i could tell of what he was singing.

Both of those occurred on the same bus, however I do have one more story which did not happen on that bus but which does have to do with crazy people I encounter. I was near Harvard looking for this bus that apparently goes from Harvard to Dudley Station which is near my apartment, people had told me it only takes 20 minutes (which it does, it's super fast). But I first needed to find the stop, the madam in the station told me it had to be moved to the corner of brattle and evans. So I went up top and found the end of brattle but I couldn't find this evans. So i decided I needed to ask some people, the first guy who passed looked almost bug eyed but I asked him anyways I said, "Excuse me, do you know the area?" He didn't reply, "Look if you know where Evans street is just point the way. He looked up and stared at me as he passed. He was a puny little guy so I didn't feel like complaining would do me any harm so I said, "Hey thanks, the whole not talking really helped." So I turned back to see if anyone else was passing by when the same guy circled around me staring at me without saying anything, I gave him a weird look and then he circled me again, and I said, "You need anything?" and then he stopped circling me and walked off. Really, there have been some interesting people I've met out here, and all while riding the ol' public transportation.