This morning's bus ride was interesting, as usual. There was one of those aging hippies who the 60's were REALLY good to on board. He was covered with tattoos and had that glazed look in his eyes that can only say one thing: half of my neurons are fried from marijuana and half of what's left is in a haze from that stuff I got from Moonshadow at Woodstock. Anyway, he was rambling to no one in particular the whole way downtown. One poor girl became the focus of his attention and he wouldn't stop talking to her--much to her horror and dismay. When he told her, "your face just lights up when you smile," Margaret and I had to hide behind our newspaper to keep from laughing (and to avoid eye contact--I didn't want to know what happens to my face when I smile--or even when I cringe.
That reminds me of a bus ride my roommate took to Salt Lake from Provo when I was in college. A mountain man-looking guy got on the bus in Provo. He looked like a cross between Grizzly Adams and the dusty drunk that was in every old Western--for the sake of the story, I'll call him Sophocles. Well, Sophocles sits down across from a good-looking college student and starts chatting her up. He keeps making comments and dropping hints and the girl is totally trapped there on the bus. Finally, some other guy tells Sophocles that she isn't interested. I'm sure the girl was terribly relieved that this knight in shining armor was coming to her rescue. Well, upon being rebuked, Sophocles stares down the other guy, pulls back his jacket, and reveals a 12" bowie knife! The guy takes one look at that and gets up and moves to the front of the bus leaving the poor girl to fend for herself! So it turns out her knight in shining armor turned out to be more of a weasel.
I don't know how the story ends--I imagine that the girl found out Sophocles was a polygamist prophet and hooks up with him, becoming wife 17 and today has 13 children, all trying to survive in their sod-roofed shack in a hardscrabble compound in the desert. So there--it DOES have a happy ending.
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J - one time when I was living in Eugene, a weird bum dude that Stacey and I called "Three Toothed Man" (for obvious reasons) was riding the same bus route home. For some reason, he locked onto me that night. He had his guitar and decided to serenade me with "stairway to heaven" on the bus. Then to top of this experience, he invited me to come to his "house" and go hot-tubbing with him. As the city bus pulled up to his stop, he pointed to a school bus in the back yard of one house and said "that's my house, come on over". Needless to say, I said "no thank you", he was dejected but got off the bus and went on his merry way. I simply cringed in horror all the way to my house... The one good thing about freaky bus traumatic events - you've always got a story to tell at a party or on a blog... hahaha.
So that was the mysterious "three-tooth man" we've heard about. Can't blame the guy for having shockingly good taste!!
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