After work, a friend of mine asked me to meet her at Value Village so I proceeded to wait for a bus that would take me there. Sharing my company was a rather old man with long white hair who smelt very much like Kokanee. He then decided that I was the best recipient for his detailed summary of his celtic heritage along with his current problems, one of those involving the loss of all his upper teeth, insisting that I "never let anyone have [my] bottom teeth, ever."
When introductions took place (Walter John, on three separate occasions), he complimented my eyes and told me never to let anyone you love turn their back on you, and foretold the issues concerning "control monsters" and how you need to "get outta there fast, even if ya love 'em," with a reassuring pat on the knee.
Even with his extreme loss, he offered me a cigarette. I informed him that I quit, hoping he would appreciate the perseverance, yet I found myself making a very silly assumption. "Come on, you kin cheat a li'l, not even a cigar?" I firmly refused. "How'd ya quit?" Cold turkey, I replied, and he laughed with a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
When a pause dwindled in the conversation, he broke out into a haggard version of, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" along with a reenactment of several scenes from The Wizard of Oz, of which I joined in, giving auspicious glances around at anyone paying any attention to the poor girl alone with a drunkard on the bus bench. "Are ya going to your old man?" he asked me, after the third or fourth verse. I corrected him, I was going to meet a friend at a store. "Do ya love 'im?" No, because there is no old man to love. "Shame," he said, and tousled my hair.
Thankfully, by this time, the bus arrived and there were no more words or ruffles or tousling to be shared between us, but I could hear him, from the back of the bus, exclaiming how there were "Werewolves in Nelson.. AAARROUUUUUUUUUUU!!!" for the rest of the trip.
10.27.2010
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you are simply the most wonderfully ridiculous peron i know.
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