I'm Not Helping Am I?

Some times when I'm riding The Bus after a long hard day of earning my teeny tiny paycheck I get bored.

Some times when I'm riding the bus after a long hard day of earning my teeny tiny paycheck I get crazy stranger crackers talking to me like I give a flying fucking about their crazy crackery bullshit.

Today both such events occurred.

To be fair the amusement this correlation between two annoying events is largely down to the spanish speaking skills of two random latinos who I often see hopping on a stop or two after I get on, and presumably get off after I do.

Now these are one of those spanish speaking banditos who do that most terrible of things: they speak spanish amongst themselves, and thus ensure that crackery crackers such as myself are totally unable to listen to their quite interesting seeming conversation. /outrage

I say quite interesting seeming of course, but largely what I mean is that it's a conversation which I can't listen to, and is there far more interesting than it would be if I could actually listen to it, according to Newton's famous Law of Monoglot Nosiness.

Of course this is going on for a few stops, nothing that really requires comment or even taking note - I don't have an Ipod and so it's a nice background noise really but you don't really notice it all that much unless you're an insane person of some kind,.

So the insane cracker in the seat in front of mine turns to me and tries to start up a conversation. Now this is some old woman - decent, reasonably expensive clothing, not a bag lady by any measure, but she does have the sort of halitosis that they probably use in iron foundries to purify slag.

And she starts talking in that harsh penetrating whisper of the conspiritorial cracker, the sort of whisper that lets you know, before she's even finished her first sentence, that she's about to say something nasty and prejudiced and crackery as all get out.

Her first sentence goes like this: "Some people seem to be new."

I blink. Once, twice, three times and the lady seems to be saying what I think she's saying. So I stare with my bored-cat expression. The one I use as a warning to cat lovers to shut up and/or back off slowly, but not to run. Never run from that expression. Running requires a chase, and chasing involve pouncing.

Nothing good ends with a pounce.

The old lady continues; "Don't you just wonder what's so important they can't speak normally when those sorts of peopel do that?"

A plan forms, not that interesting yet.

"Oh it's okay for me," I reply, "I can speak spanish." I can't but she looks interested so I continue: "D'you wanna know what they're saying?" I finish mischievously, watch that snopping little hunger at the thought of having an "in" to the brief little private space the latinos' have carved into this sad little lady's life using their words. Away from the judging, hating senses of women like her.

So I turn and mock her in a way that she surely can't miss, but doesn't give any sign of noticing, as I look towards the latinos' I basically do an impression of the psychic guy from Heroes - eyes squint while I put one hand ot my head in that way of TV psychics. Because, as crackery americans know, bilingualism is basically a form of black magic practiced by only the occasional person with "the gift", and so requires suitable actions.

But as I squint at the latinos, I notice the bus is slowing for a stop that's not so far from my apartment.

And Coyote dances through my brain and stall until the bus stops.

That's when I look scared, with a little whispered "oh my god." escpaing my lips as though unbidden. Meanwhile, fate and chance dance in my palms because the latinos finally notice me staring at them like I'm taking a dump in my pants and stop talking to give me a weird look before trying to ignore me, while I think of spiders and attempted rapes and homelessness and all those other things I can do to fool lie detectors, and rush off clumsily as the bus stops.

then, just as I am about to step off the bus, I turn back and meet the perplexed and slight weirded out expression of the halitosis lady's face and mouth silently to her "Run."

Then I hop down to the pavement and run like all the maitre'ds of all the restaurants I've dined & dashed from were two steps behind me, just around the nearest corner back from the path I know the bus will take.

Around the corner I stop and breath with barely supressed giggle of shenanigans well played. Of course I can't resist a covert peek around the corner.

And there I see the bus carry on for a few yards before stopping, with an irritable hissing noise, to let off an ashen faced lady, with considerable bad breath and more fear than any sensible person would carry around with them, if they stopped to think about themselves rather than merely how they relate to Los Other.

Fuck Wednesdays.