Or, “One fine morning
at the bus station”On a rare bench at the transit center, an old black lady and an old white lady were huddled close together.They’re friends,
was my first thought, or maybe they’re a couple, and maybe they were. But the black lady was dipping something into a wad of tin foil in her hand,
and the white lady was crouching toward her, waiting for her turn. If
I’m up on the latest moral panic, they were doing fentanyl.

That’s the
panic with the tin foil, right? The news says it’s what the kids are into these days. Those ladies were both my age, though — really
old, but perhaps young at heart.♦ ♦ ♦   It’s February, but Santa was waiting at the bus station. He’s a black
man, and wore the red jacket with white fringes, the red pants, even
the big shiny belt buckle. He had no beard, though, and no cap. He was “Casual
Santa,” just waiting for the #165 bus.♦ ♦ ♦ 
Standing gets boring and cramps my legs, so usually at the bus station I walk around, and after a bit my pacing brought me back to where the fentanyl ladies had
been. The black lady was far away, walking around and talking to the
sky, but the white lady was still on the bench, fumbling with her
lighter and a (tobacco) cigarette.She looked at me as I was looking at her, and she hollered, “Hey, mister!” so like a good puppy I approached.”Don’t forget to sing,” she said, very seriously. “Never forget to sing.”I didn’t sing, but I smiled. Seattle has its charms, and I’m glad I moved back here.♦ ♦ ♦ 

When a
bus is idling at a station or the end of the line, the driver is
supposed to put a wheel chock under one of the front tires. It’s a
safety rule — the wheel
chock prevents a runaway bus, if it slips into gear or the brake fails.Well, a driver at the Burien Transit Center didn’t fully understand the rule. She put the wheel chock behind the wheel. That might prevent a reverse runaway, but the pavement at the bus station slopes slightly down a hill, so a wheel chock behind the wheel can’t prevent anything.Ah, it’s probably a BS rule anyway. Do runaway buses ever really happen?
♦ ♦ ♦  Here’s
a moment so ugly and unsettling that I’ve hesitated to write about it.
It happened about a month ago, and for that long I’ve been skipping over
the two words I’d jotted in my notebook — “eating glass.” I want to rip that page out of the notebook, so here’s what happened:A shattered jar of bright green guacamole
dip was on the station’s concrete walkway. Broken glass
is not unusual in any urban setting, but a young bum was kneeling over the mess with a small plastic spoon,
scooping and eating the guacamole. I didn’t say anything, because a man from the always-present Bible outreach station had come to
the guacamole feast, and he was saying what I might’ve said. In difficult but understandable English (this
particular preacher usually speaks Spanish) he was saying that a tiny bit of glass swallowed might cut you up from inside.The bum shook his head no, but carefully studied every spoonful before putting it into his
mouth, and he did put a longish shard aside. Mostly it was bon appétit, though — he’d swish it on his
tongue for a moment, then swallow.The street preacher offered to take the bum to the convenience store next door, and buy him an
unopened, unshattered jar of guacamole, if he’d only leave the broken
jar undisturbed on the sidewalk.The bum said OK, swallowed one last spoonful, and the two men walked toward the QuickMart together.Then my bus came and took me home, where I’m so very wealthy I throw food in the trash when it looks even slightly off color.2/20/2023