I was waiting at the Burien Transit Center, minding my own business by singing obscene Christmas carols (“Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but my penis is delightful…”), when a couple of little kids went running past me, playing tag or something.

Any bus or bus station usually has winos and meth-heads, so most parents keep kids under tight control, which is dumb, I think. Bums aren’t especially dangerous, and if you act like they are, you’re warping the next generation. These kids’ parents were paying attention, but unworried fifty footsteps away, which is good mom & dadding.

The children were 5 or 7 years old, and their play suddenly blossomed into a wordless song, with five clicks, then five more clicks, each kid mimicking the other. Only the noises, barely a tune, but I knew it same as they did — Woody Woodpecker’s theme song.

This blew my grouchiness away, and a smile crossed my face. Kids are aliens to me these days, what with their video games and handheld devices, but Woody Woodpecker is eternal, and I found that pleasantly reassuring in these troubled times.

Also, it got the song in my brain, and all day long I was like, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah…

♦ ♦ ♦

Another fine afternoon, I was waiting downtown for a bus home, when a refugee from another world walked up to me. Disheveled, dirty-looking, with patchy hair and eyes multidimensional, he looked at me and said, “Hey, it is Monday, right?”

And you know what? I really didn’t know. That’s one of the things about being retired plus having no social life. Every second Friday there’s breakfast with my mom, but other than that the days go by without much notice.

The bum was waiting for my answer, and I remembered that I was going to see a movie at the Beacon Cinema in a few days, so I did the math and decided that would make this… Wednesday? No, Tuesday. “I’m not certain,” I said, “but I think it’s Tuesday.”

The guy looked glum at the news. “Oh man,” he said, “I have an appointment on Monday, and I sure hope that’s today.”

So I thought it through again, remembering my most recent breakfast with Mom, and counting the days backward. “Might be Wednesday,” I re-explained, “but I’m leaning toward Tuesday.”

“OK, man, thanks…” he said, and started walking away, glum, cuz he’d missed that appointment.

Me, I whipped out my notebook and jotted a few lines to remind me to write about it later. Now a week or so’s gone by and I’m still not certain what day it was.

♦ ♦ ♦

What a mensch I am! Stepped off the bus on a dark, drizzly night and saw a woman running and waving her arms, trying to catch the bus before it rolled away.
She was almost there, but the door had closed, the bus was inching forward, so I slammed my fist really hard against the side of the bus.

It made a solid thump, woke a drunk asleep against the window, made the driver hesitate and brake, and the lady got onto the bus.

There’s mud all over the sleeve of my jacket, and my wrist hurts, and that’s my good deed for 2025.

1/5/2025

Transit Takes

itsdougholland.com 
← PREVIOUS          NEXT →