KNUCKLE HEADS

(From Thursday, 11/15/07):

It poured all morning and drizzled all night. I hoped I wouldn’t get pneumonia and die. I say that because Gram W yelled at me in my head all the way to work this morning about my wet head. She’s from that generation that believes wet heads kill, and germs are just a coincidence.I didn't want to take the 9 again, so I walked to the 12 in the downpour. I wore a yellow raincoat and brought an extra pair of shoes, but somehow it never occurred to me that the rest of my body might get wet walking a mile to the bus.

My pants were pretty much soaked through by the time the bus picked me up. I had to walk again across parking lot at work, thoroughly soaking whatever other parts of my clothing left untouched from minutes before. My shoes made squishy noises all the way up the stairs and my pants stuck to my legs; they didn’t dry until after noon. I found a big black mark across my thigh where I'd held my book bag on my lap. Also, the patch on my raincoat let the rain through. When I took my coat off, a coworker said it looked like I was lactating. For the first time that week, I expected my experiment would prompt a verbal warning about being inappropriately dressed for work. I wondered how people in big cities in business suits managed to get around town and show up for work mostly unscathed.

The bus driver was also having an off day. When he pulled up to the curb, the sign on the bus said "Not in Service." I hoped the bus was not an illusion: God's green way of taking me “home.” Kind of like Large Marge in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.

I got on anyway. I figured if I was already dead, it wouldn't much matter what bus I was getting on. Passengers at the next stop, however, confirmed it was all just a big mistake. The driver apologized and told them, "I just had sixty high schoolers on this bus."

A man who sat next me repeated him. "Sixty high-schoolers. Oh Lord."

The driver shrugged in the mirror. "It mighta been fifty.’Lot of high schoolers either way."

"'Lotta knuckle heads," said the man sitting on the bench with me. People in the back of the bus chuckled.

That reminds me: there was a middle-aged white man sitting in the red cushy seat right behind the driver that was dedicated by the Rosa Parks Foundation. I don’t think anyone else caught the irony.