Keeping It Classy On The Number Nine Bus

Since yesterday's quick note seemed to work okay, here's another one.

Tonight I was coming home from the gym on the Number Nine Bus. It's one of the worst bus routes in the city, so of course ETS forces me to take it as much as possible. There's literally no other bus available at 9:30 PM. Anyway, there's a mostly eaten bag of chips or popcorn or something on the seat in front of me. I'm reading my Kobo, trying to lose myself in Bertrand Russell's critique of Plato's theory of ideas (heavy stuff), when this little black guy gets on the bus and heads right for that seat in front of me. He sits down and puts the bag on his lap. Then over the next five minutes or so he keeps shooting little glances back at me, while I'm trying to lose myself in the book. (But I can see him in my peripheral vision so it isn't really working.) Then he reaches in the bag and starts eating whatever's in there. At first he does it tentatively, while still looking back at me, but when he sees I don't react, then he starts eating like it's no big deal. Just snacking on some random food he found on the bus. Meanwhile, there's a guy about four seats behind me who's explaining to his buddy how he got out of a seven year jail sentence because there was a last minute change in judges, and the new judge didn't have experience in criminal cases. And later he came to a meeting with his parole officer both stoned and drunk, but the parole officer was out of town and her replacement decided to ignore the whole thing. I got off the bus before he reached the moral of his story, but I imagine it was something like "I can do whatever I want, and it always seems to work out for me." Just another day on the Number 9.