The buses have these signs up to remind people to keep their electronics to themselves (no speakerphone mode, no music players without earphones, etc.). The signs are illustrated with an ass. Or possibly a burro. The courtesy policy is reasonable.
People are generally pretty good, though sometimes you get treated to a revealing half of a conversation. One sometimes wants to say, "Do you believe your own bullshit?" Because one does truly wonder.
Today we had a cellphone-related altercation. A kid was on the phone and a man sitting near him told him to shut up.
Events unfolded:
"No, you shut up."
"No, you shut up. Fuck you!"
They both hop up and do some male posturing. Some passengers glance back at them.
"Fuck you!"
"I'm gonna cut you, motherfucker!"
"Hey, is that a razor? Dude, I gotta hang up and call the cops."
At this point everybody turns around to watch. Even the fussy toddler hushes up to listen and work on that budding vocabulary.
The kid reports to the bus driver what's going on. The bus driver is the only one who didn't turn around. The bus driver is rather unresponsive, but then he's busy driving the bus.
The kid calls the cops and starts reporting: what happened, which bus, where the bus is, a very detailed description of what the guy's wearing. "And he's got no teeth!"
The guy pulls the cord and hops off at the next stop.
"Oh, he's running away now. Look at him run!"
The bus proceeds without further event.
Every day, I take public transportation to work. I have my car up here in Alexandria, but I only use it to run errands. Most of the time it sits in front of my landlady's house. Parking is a bit tight around here (narrow streets, little driveways that only accommodate one car), so I leave it in almost exactly the same spot. If you didn't happen to look at the place where my car sits during the brief intervals when it is at the grocery store, you might imagine that it never moves at all.
Alexandria has a parking ordinance that cars cannot be left in the same spot for over 72 hours continuously, except on weekends and holidays. If you see a car left in the same spot, you can call the police and have them leave a Vehicle Check Notice threatening to impound the car if it isn't moved in three days.
I know this because I confirmed it with Parking Enforcement when I called about the Vehicle Check Notice I found on my car this morning. "Someone has been complaining on your car."
Well, if the neighbor objects to my leaving my car in front of the house where I live, I sure hope they don't mind my leaving my car in front of the houses where other people live. I figure that if I leave it in front of a different house every day, I will avoid having my car impounded, and I will annoy all the neighbors equally, except possibly the one who complained about my car in the first place, who will be extra annoyed at finding my car in front of their house (you take your chances with the law of unintended consequences). I really needed something else to do. A community spirit building activity. Who says community spirit has to be positive?
Anyway, I can see the neighbor's point. Also, a sizable colony of mushrooms was growing underneath my car.
Last week I had my watch battery changed by my brother's secret twin (separated at birth—by about twenty years). Same haircut and hair color, same facial structure, same fashion sense (my brother has that same shirt), similar crummy job at the same mall … Even down to the ne'er-do-well friend hanging around. I tried not to stare and managed not to say, "You're my little brother's twin!"
I have found secret twins among my old friends. Oz downloaded Picasa and started playing with the face matching feature in his photo archive. When he was browsing through the extracted faces I kept mistaking one of my friends for me (pointy nose, pointy chin, similar haircuts), except that I'd never had cool red glasses like hers.
Oz was going on about how accurate the face recognition was, except when it wasn't. Then he found that Picasa was confusing red-glasses-girl with another college friend (silver-glasses-guy), but only when both were in profile. "Huh. Round forehead, pointy nose, pointy chin, glasses."
"Think that's why we were all friends? We looked the same?"