2 ... 2 ...
Picture yourself on the back of a Greyhound bus--in a seat in front of the toilet with water leaking--drip by drip--on you from above.
"The back of your seat is all wet, dude," the guy next two you says," a husky man, fully bearded, face looking as honest as Abe's.
You look back, finding that, yes, indeed, the back of the seat is all wet. You look ahead of you and find that all of the seats are taken, then you look at the last row of seats bucked up against the rear of the bus. Those are taken--all three of them--by a fully extended passenger, sleeping.
Welcoming you an hour or so before the beginning of the bus ride was a gregarous 22 year-old Canadian who has a pension of about $800 dollars a month, making him not able to afford a flight.
You hear his whole life story over the two hours you are on the bus--his values, his dreams, his expectations, and his mishaps. Oh, yes, and he loves his mother, respects her even.
Next to him--across the aisle--is an Iraq war vet who's had both his knees packed with shrapnel in an accident that took place at one of those checkpoints you hear about on the news all the time.
He's got no cartilage left inside his knees. He knows the pain of war, but refuses to wear it on his face.
The vet also tells you and the other passanger--all three of you who are now participating in a conversation--that he makes and sells weapons for a living.
You think, "you get what you get." But then you think maybe this is not the case, maybe "you get more than you bargained for." Maybe not that either.
You get, more assuredly, life in the raw, a juxtapositioning of America's down-and-out, an America that still yearns for the good life, an America that's perhaps let some people down.
When you leave the driving to them, your riding is rough.
"The back of your seat is all wet, dude," the guy next two you says," a husky man, fully bearded, face looking as honest as Abe's.
You look back, finding that, yes, indeed, the back of the seat is all wet. You look ahead of you and find that all of the seats are taken, then you look at the last row of seats bucked up against the rear of the bus. Those are taken--all three of them--by a fully extended passenger, sleeping.
Welcoming you an hour or so before the beginning of the bus ride was a gregarous 22 year-old Canadian who has a pension of about $800 dollars a month, making him not able to afford a flight.
You hear his whole life story over the two hours you are on the bus--his values, his dreams, his expectations, and his mishaps. Oh, yes, and he loves his mother, respects her even.
Next to him--across the aisle--is an Iraq war vet who's had both his knees packed with shrapnel in an accident that took place at one of those checkpoints you hear about on the news all the time.
He's got no cartilage left inside his knees. He knows the pain of war, but refuses to wear it on his face.
The vet also tells you and the other passanger--all three of you who are now participating in a conversation--that he makes and sells weapons for a living.
You think, "you get what you get." But then you think maybe this is not the case, maybe "you get more than you bargained for." Maybe not that either.
You get, more assuredly, life in the raw, a juxtapositioning of America's down-and-out, an America that still yearns for the good life, an America that's perhaps let some people down.
When you leave the driving to them, your riding is rough.
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