Saturday, July 03, 2004
(7:28 PM) | Anonymous:
Bicyclers Have More Fun.
(And Walkers.)(And Bus Riders and Rail Riders and Riders of Any Form of Mass Transit.)
Car-free in Milwaukee. You can’t buy this stuff. White guy stumbles toward me from the biergarten across the street, obviously intoxicated. “You wouldn’t have enuffta… get me to 7th and Wisconsin?”
“Oh, it’s just up that way. It’s not very far. I walk it all the time. Just go that way and turn left when you get to Wisconsin.”
“That’s where I came from.”
“Then you’re going the wrong way. Wisconsin is that way. It’s north, and you’re going south.”
He shakes his head like a dog. Dramatically, as if to himself, “ ’Slike I had another seizure.”
“It’s very walkable. Especially in this weather.” Trust me, I really, really know.
“Do you know what a seizure is?”
I look at him.
He goes for a more obtuse seizure angle. “So I go that way and turn right.”
“No, follow this road until you reach Wisconsin, and turn left. Go west to get to 7th,” pointing.
“I don’t wanna go to the lake.”
“The lake’s that way.”
He gropes for a different kind of sympathy. “I’m tryin’ to get to the CHRISTIAN building. The big WHITE building...”
This guy isn’t taking “no money” for an answer. My bus is approaching so I walk forward for the driver to see me. “Good luck,” I say to the drunk man as I heave my pack onto my shoulder and step onto the bus.
I know it might sound like I’m whining, but I dig encounters like this. I get to have more bizarre meetings, funny experiences, beautiful sightings, and chance discoveries than car drivers do. Now let me be the first to point out that 1) I love driving. 2) I once owned a car, a 1989 Mazda MX6. Black, moon roof. Stick shift. Turbo-charged. Whoo-whee! 3) I sometimes borrow my friends’ cars or get rides from people.
I’m not talking about righteousness. I’m talking about fun.
Yesterday twilight when I was walking down Farwell Ave. with a six-pack of Lakefront Cattail Ale from Koppa’s and a bag full of Clif energy bars, I came upon some sidewalk hoggers. I teetered on the rightmost strip of the sidewalk like a tightrope walker and after those kids passed, the woman I was nearing seemed to be veering toward me. I was thinking I couldn't get any farther right when I realized she was planning to have an interaction with me. Blondish, a little younger than me with two lip rings (she was probably headed to Comet Cafe), she held out a hot pink garden rose as she approached. I thought she was going to ask me to buy it, but she just continued to look me in the eye, smiling and handing the rose to me without a word. “Oh! Thanks!” I was surprised and sincere.
I wondered if she a) was committing a random act of senseless beauty, b) had seen me coming and taken a shine to me and, since she happened to be by the yard with the rosebushes, plucked a flower just for me, or c) was conducting a social experiment (I wish I’d had the presence of mind to seize her and plant one on her).
* * *
A disturbed boy on the bus gave me a Heineken and asked if I had a boyfriend.
“I have nine. Would you like to be my tenth?”
I’ve learned to always say, “I’m married. My ring is at the jewelers’.”
* * *
I finally met my crazy, psychic homeless bum. I was sitting at the full-amenity (bench, rain shelter) bus stop next to a man who was muttering random, nonsensical things to himself. I was paying careful attention, of course. I got up to look down the street for the bus and he said, “Please excuse me for saying so, but you have very nice eyebrows.”
“Oh, I don’t mind at all,” I replied.
He continued to peer at me. I knew he was going to come out with a doozy. He did. “You know, I know you’re psychic,” he announced.
“What makes you think that?” I was riveted. I haven’t been psychic since I was a child.
“I can see your aura.”
“Really. What does it look like?”
“It looks… earthy. It looks like you’ve been around, you’ve seen some things. But you still have love in your heart.”
I glided on that for months.
* * *
And these are just a few of the billions of funny and wonderful little things that happen to me because I’m not locomoting by car. Wanna try it? Uh-huh.
