MonkeyPants

Bus Crazies

Usually the crazies on the bus find me, but today there were two of them, and they had already found each other.

Here is their dialogue, as I heard it from Fifth and Granville all the way to Hastings and Princess Street. CL1 was maybe affected by Alzheimer’s, but I was interested how CL2 just kept on coming back at her with the disagreement and misplaced hostility.

Crazy Lady Number 1: Is that a  baby? (Gestures to covered stroller-like-thing)

Crazy Lady Number 2: (Mumbles inaudibly)

CL1:  Well, it could be anything, really. A baby, a dog, a cat, a critter…a creature even. Is it? Is it a baby?

CL2: (Mumbles slightly louder)

CL1: Is it? Is it a baby?

CL2: You need to get a hearing aid.

CL1: What’s that?

CL2: You…need…a…hearing aid.

CL1: (Pause) No, I don’t.

The bus full of secretaries and mall workers is looking from one woman to the other. Where will this go?

CL1: Anyway, it’s all over. All Saint’s, Halloween, Michael Jackson. It’s all over now.

CL2: It’s not over.

CL1: It is, Halloween is 366 days a year in Vancouver. It’s all over and they just keep adding days. It’s because of the Mayans.

CL2: Oh. I guess they weren’t Swiss.

CL1: No, they weren’t. And Michael Jackson wasn’t either. He’s still with us you know.

CL2: No, he isn’t!

CL1: Oh, you tell me, that much money and he can’t fake his own death? He’s safe somewhere. Safe from all the eyes.

CL2: That’s ridiculous. You can’t say that. There was an inquiry.

CL1 He’s not gone. Neither are the Mayans.

Then CL2 got off the bus, taking whatever was in the covered baby stroller with her. CL1 subsided a bit, but when the man beside her asked her a question, she leaped up and sang, “No time to talk, I’m late, I’m late!” as she hopped off the bus.

And then it was my stop, and I got off the bus.