A man got on the bus one day, hands knotted and twisted into bizarre bulbs and odd angles by crippling arthritis (my best guess...). At first it seemed like his mind had escaped a similar fate. Then, I saw him having some trouble getting his bus pass out with those unresponsive claws of his. He asked me to help and I ended up having to go through his grimy pocket to find that, shockingly, he had no bus pass. As a matter of fact, he said he had /left it at home/. Disgusted at the lack of honesty, plus the fact that he had $20 and $50 dollar bills in his wallet, I sat back down to read. The bus driver let him off this time.
I didn't make much small-talk with him, but he was coherent, and not even that unpleasant. He remembered seeing me on the bus before, and asked me what I was doing. I told him what I was reading (Chemistry), then we were silent for a while while I read.
He called my attention loudly later, asking for my help. Alarmed, I looked up and all I could see was packages of cigarettes scattered around him. "Gawd," I thought disgustedly, "Poor fellow probably got too frustrated with his stuff and spilled it." Resignedly, I closed my book, and got up to help.
What I didn't know, and what the bus driver told me later, is that the man had repeated this sort of action before. His pattern of behavior was to "accidentally" drop the cigarettes, then even as the person tried to help him he would get wilder and wilder, throwing the packages helter skelter as fast as they could be picked up.
I would have fallen prey to that, but the bus driver came to my rescue. "Look," she said to the man, "You are gonna have to do this yourself. Don't you be askin' other people when you know you can do it just fine."
As she said that he kept interrupting her with the words, "Eh, I'm not talkin' to you. I didn't ask you. I'm talkin' to this person. I'm not talkin' to you..."
I got the hint. "Sorry," I said, "You won't have me around to do it later. You have to learn to do it now." He asked in a heartbroken tone for me to please help him. I coldly replied, "I'm afraid not."
He said "Please?" in a heartbroken tone. I said, "No." He said "Please?" in a heartbroken tone. I said "No," and went back to reading.
... He said "Please?" in a heartbroken tone. (We're not crying alligator tears, now are we?)
I gave him silence, and he picked up the packets of cigarettes himself some minutes later. But what was that acrid smell... no he wouldn't. He couldn't be that resentful. He was.
After the man got off the bus, the bus driver rolled her eyes and grumbled, "Man, he /always/ pees on the bus." Sure enough, there was a liberal pool of urine running down the metal grid on the bus floor.
Those people SCARE me.
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