Are the young women in this video Taylor Swift’s people? Or are they actresses pretending to be her spirited friends? How does one become one of Taylor Swift’s people? And how does one become an actress that pretends to be one of Taylor Swift’s people? Not that I want to become one, but this is just the type of thing I wonder about when I should be eating dinner, but can’t because I have kickboxing class at 8:00pm.
I am a white belt.
They don’t: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_birds_have_periods
I have taken a provocative photograph of my cat.
At least once a week my two friends and I get together to grab dinner and chat about anything interesting that has happened since we last met. They often have stories to tell that revolve around their daily commute to work on the public bus. This commute, in addition to upping their weekly expenses, has provided them with an endless amount of amusing experiences that they kindly share with me during our get-togethers. Their weekly tales from the city bus are wide and varied; an act of kindness from a stranger; a broken down bus; a particular odor that was so repulsive, so revolting, so out-of-this world that it could not possibly have been from earth- that it must have seeped up from the depths of hell- “oh wait, actually it’s coming from that man over there holding a decomposing chicken.”
If ever fresh out of anything to write about, my P.O.A will be to hop on ye old city bus for a few hours and soak in the experience. I’m pretty confident a mere afternoon on the bus would afford me with enough posts for a month or so. And this certainly isn’t confined to India. It’s not just an India public transport thing, it’s a global public transportation thing. Everyone from every corner of the world has an amusing public transportation story because public transportation, my friends, is so much more than just a ride, it’s an adventure.
This post is about an experience my friends, Midge and Reiko, had on the bus that they shared with me during our weekly gathering. Please note, those are not their real names (though I do wish I had two friends named Midge and Reiko. Especially Midge.) What follows is my visual and textual reinterpretation of their adventure, which I have titled:
Midge and Reiko got on their usual bus to work. The bus was very crowded as always, but Reiko managed to grab the last available seat. Midge found some standing space right beside Reiko.
A young woman seated next to Reiko was holding her baby. It was a cute little bugger, and Reiko, being the naturally friendly person she is, smiled kindly at the baby as she wiggled its little bugger toes. People got on and off. The conductor yelled in Hindi. The bus sped through town. And Midge and Reiko chatted about…I dunno…deep sea diving. All was going as usual on this seemingly average commute.
*note: bus was much more crowded than drawing appears*
The bus rides in our city are always bumpy. Not REALLY bumpy, but bumpy enough to make a little, tiny baby a bit nauseous. And with each bump on this bus ride, Reiko noticed that the baby sitting next to her was getting a little more purple— a little more visibly sick— a little more barfy.
“Oh no. This baby is gonna vom all over me.”
She tried to scoot away, but the bus was way too crowded. There was nowhere to run. And then the moment came that Reiko knew was coming.
But something extraordinary happened. Something remarkable. The mother of the baby exhibited superhuman reflexes and nabbed the baby’s vom before it splashed all over Reiko.
Midge and Reiko were stunned. Both were completely astonished at the phenomenal display of ninja-like prowess that occurred right before their very eyes. But more than that, they were filled with the utmost gratitude for the mother that had seized the projectile vomit milliseconds before reaching Reiko’s face.
However, what seemed like a vom crisis narrowly averted, suddenly and unexpectedly took a turn for the worse as everyone slowly began to think—
What was this woman going to do with the baby vomit resting in her hand?
Naturally, one would think the first and obvious place to dispose of the baby vom would be out the window.
However, it seemed like the mother had another option in mind. As she sat there, holding her baby’s vom in her hand, her eyes slowly shifted to the floor— right where Reiko’s feet were.
Reiko and Midge saw where the woman’s gaze had landed. Her intended baby vom disposal target became very clear.
“The window. THE WINDOW. THROW__IT__OUT__THE__WINNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW”
Midge shouted and pleaded, hoping the woman would realize the window was a much more suitable place to dispose of the spew. But she had made her choice. Her hand, right over Reiko’s uncovered feet, slowly began to rotate. The baby vom was about to fall. Reiko, too horrified at what was about to happen, was frozen in a panic- unable to do anything.
Procession of events:
Adding to the horrors that had just happened, were the smiles from all the bystanders, who apparently thought the whole situation was just cute and dandy. At this point Midge screamed,
“STOP THE BUS.“
I imagine they just stood there for a while, wherever they were, trying to internalize what had just happened. That a woman, without thinking it the least bit rude or utterly unhygienic, deliberately dropped her baby’s spew all over a stranger’s foot.
Fifteen minutes later.
That’s the end of that story. But maybe we can put a positive spin on it. Everything is relative. While baby vomit in America is something not so great, in India, maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe baby vom is considered a blessing from god, maybe in India it’s….the best gift eva?
Could this crazy woman on the bus actually have been extremely kind? This baby vomit might have been a wonderful gift to Reiko- a foot perfume of some sorts. Perhaps that is why all the Indians stood with such grand smiles upon their faces, brought out by witnessing such an enormous act of generosity as the woman gave her oh-so-precious and valuable baby vomit to a stranger.
This leads me to two conclusions. The first is that I think there is a great gap in the world of knowledge. Someone needs to undertake some serious, extensive academic research on the cultural significance of baby vom, not just in India, but across the globe.
So I call upon you, academics and liberal hippie students! Now is your time! Grab your pens, grab your moleskine notebooks, grab your North Face backpacks and head overseas to study the cultural significance of baby spew. Just think of the cultural insights we can learn!!!
FRANCE:
MEXICO:
KOREA:
Second, maybe I should start wearing sneakers when I’m on the bus.
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Every year, on the 17th of March, people all across the world come together to honor Saint Patrick, the sage inventor of the color green. The day is generally characterized by the drinking of an extreme amount of alcohol and the listening of bagpipes. One can assume that the true purpose of this incredible intoxication is really a way to get so smashed that the terrible noise created from bagpipes doesn’t actually sound like the terrible noise created from bagpipes.
On this sacred holiday of St. Patty’s day, my roommates and I decide to get our friends over for some good ol’ fashioned day-drinking and wearing of the color green (we also allowed the wearing of St. Patrick’s second favorite color: puddle-gray). After a few drinks in our casa, we were feeling adequately jazzy and decided to venture out to some nearby bars.
Bar festivities commenced as usual— we drank, we joked, and we chatted. Unknown to us– one particularly drunk woman took immediate issue with us as soon as we stepped into the bar. She was apparently dissatisfied that we had dared sit on an empty bench that was in close proximity her. And with due reason. It is our most promised human right—the right to a people-free bar on St. Patty’s day—-that all peoples of all backgrounds deserve. So naturally, she proceeded to shout vulgarities and insults at us while struggling to keep her drunken self from falling over.
We were all were having a good time amongst ourselves so it was not difficult to ignore her unpleasant remarks and scornful glare. We were adults, and like adults, were able to control ourselves in the face of a belligerent and very drunk woman. However, there are some things that you just can’t control. And this is when the situation escalated— when my friend, henceforth referred to as Humphrey, was unable to control the uncontrollable:
What emerged from Humphrey’s bum was fart— a fart that unleashed a much more savage beast than the one we were dealing with before.
Reacting as if she had just been shot in the eyeball, the woman became even more combative, evolving into what I shall call the crazed mistress of the night (it wasn’t night). Sensing that this woman was about to implode, Humphrey made a swift retreat to the other side of the bar. But in his retreat, he left our fellow comrade, Bogart, to endure alone the wrath of the crazed mistress of the night.
She became increasingly louder and more crude with each verbal assault. Up until a certain point, her attempts to provoke a retaliation were in vain as Bogart remained calm. like the most calm lady bug you have ever seen. So in a last desperate effort, she decided to just start making shit up:
Upon hearing such blatant libel, Bogart decided it was time to defend himself from this character attack and let the woman know what she truly was: a crazed mistress of the night (day). So he let her have it. Unable to match his reason and intelligence, the woman summoned her manfriend over to defend her honor. Fortunately, the manfriend was a reasonable kind of dude and knew that his ladyfriend was being crazy drunk. Thus Bogart and said manfriend, realizing their common bro-hood, were able to work out a true gentleman’s agreement: You stay over there, and we shall stay-th over here-th. All was quiet on the western front and it appeared as though the conflict had been evaded. This was until Bogart decided to lean in and whisper to the manfriend what was both the best and worst thing to say in the entire history of that moment:
I’m not going to get into the details of the scuffle because …what do you think this is– the Hunger Game? Well yes, kind of, because I do perceive myself to be the present-day Katniss. But no, I’m not going to exploit the incredibly gory details of the scuffle for the sake of entertainment. All you need to know is there was scuffling and shortly after we were “escorted” out of the bar to the cries of “You don’t mess with family,” which presumably meant, you don’t fart on family. Amen to that, sister.
We exited the bar, adrenaline pumping, only to go to another bar, where we eventually realized that it was really crowded and if ya can’t dance, then what the hell is the point of being in a bar. Back at the house we pieced together what had happened to lead up to the scuffle. The only real conclusion we came to was that the crazed mistress of the night was truly a crazed mistress of the night: acting completely beyond our understanding.
On this matter– why a woman was so eager to start a fight with amicable strangers— I am still genuinely confused. Like women who wear high heels, republicans, and mime artists, there are some people who I will never fully understand. But mere lack of understanding is no reason to discount the character of a person. She’s probably a good person and just had a very bad day. I remember the the ever-so-wise Atticus Finch and what he said to his daughter in the classic To Kill A Mockingbird, “You never really knew a man until you stood in his shoes and walked around in them.”
So I sit her now trying—trying to place myself in those shoes— to imagine what could have happened in her past, what happened before our encounter that had left her in such a highly reactive and agitated mood. To understand. To empathize. I too have had my share of bad moods. And I too have overreacted to something trivial due to those bad moods. Maybe the same things that would trigger a bad mood for me happened minutes earlier to her. Like…perhaps she was eating too much chocolate and got chocolate cramps and then her boyfriend was like “There’s no such thing as chocolate cramps.” And then she was like “Oh no. I must have cancer.” And just like that she went from eating chocolate to being in a bad mood to starting fights in bars. I get it.
But trying to understand is hard. And it’s also painful to try to wear another person’s shoes. And if it’s not painful, it’s because the shoes are too big and now you just look like a silly clown. And how are you supposed to get a boyfriend if you look like a silly clown? Personality? I think not.
——
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This is a true story. A wonderful love story. This love story, in many ways, is much like Woody Allen’s movie Annie Hall— except much better, because in this story everyone dies at the end.
In addition. For this particular story I’ve decided to employ my artistic license and will stray away from my realistic rendering of the human form and take on a much more abstract, post-minimalist approach— which I like to call cuadrados con un corazón. I will also be straying from my usual humorous narrative, as my intentions are to make you weep with emotion. Love is not funny at all. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It’s like Sinbad. Yes, love is like Sinbad. Write that down.
****~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~****
Once upon a time, a young woman was lying on the grass with all her friends. They were on a college retreat and enjoying their free time away from the responsibilities of educational attainment. It was the 1970s so these young ladies were all fake flower children and conversing about fake flower children things:
Across the field was a young man stumbling around with a stack of books. The young woman and her friends spotted him and laughed, “Dweeb alert!”, “Nerd shit!”, and “hahahahahaha! JERK.” The fake flower child was my mom. The nerd shit was my dad. And this was the first time they saw each other. My mother was a super hip lady, a social butterfly who was once voted “best personality” in middle school. And my father was the kind of kid that this happened to in middle school:
You would suspect the likelihood of my father and mother interacting after this first visual contact to be slim, but alas, we live in the noble country of America, where the oppressive youth social hierarchy disintegrates after high school, and social butterflies hang with nerds, cool Asians dance with not cool Asians, and athletes play Jenga with overweight theater majors. The only ones who really are excluded are a cappella kids. No one likes them.
So as fate had it, my parents’ social circles came in contact. I’m not sure exactly how their respective friends started hanging out with each other— perhaps my father’s roommate, known around campus as “Night Stalker,” was an acquaintance of mom’s roommate’s boyfriend, the albino poet. Something completely normal like that.
But that’s not important— what is important is that after being introduced to each other, my father quickly became smitten with mother. Again and again he would ask her out, but again and again she refused. My poor father was heartbroken— perhaps it was time to give up, perhaps it was time to start asking her best friend out, perhaps it was time to start suspecting she was a lesbian. But, fortunately for my existence, after a while my mom finally said yes, because as you have learned from such timeless films as Bubble Boy and Transformers, while they might not be as babilicious as the jock in your math class, it’s always better in the long run to date the nerd. They are more likely to “love you for who you truly are” and not make jokes about the WNBA.
*come back for part two- to find out how everyone dies!
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Tagged Annie Hall, love story, Nerd shit, youth social hierarchy
