Today I was riding the bus back home and being a Sunday, the trip frequency is reduced so that means every bus is crowded. Sure enough, the #19 was packed, though I lucked out and got a seat when I got on downtown. Eventually the standing-only room fills up and this rather large gentleman ends up parked beside me. When I say “rather large” I mean he is about as overweight as I weigh in total (that being 150 pounds). His belly is bulbous in a way that suggests he has recently consumed whole and intact a small planetoid. He is wearing a powder blue polo shirt and gray sweatpants. The vast expanse of the shirt does a brave job of mostly covering his upper body but the pinkish white flesh of his gut can be spied jutting out over the protesting waistband of the sweatpants.
Let me back up a bit. I don’t dislike fat people. We each all must come to terms with our individual lifestyles. Some of us cannot lose weight due to medical conditions, others because they think fat and chocolate are recognized food groups. Hey, whatever floats your (gravy) boat, I say. I do not judge, even after discovering that a sensible diet will indeed lead you to the prescribed weight for your given body type.
If you’re fat, I only ask one thing: keep that tremendously huge gut of yours out of my face when I’m on the bus. It makes me nervous.
The fat guy pulls out a cell phone and begins talking in a very loud manner. This is hardly unusual, as most people use A VERY LOUD TONE WHEN TALKING ON A CELL PHONE IN PUBLIC. I’m hoping technology will eventually solve whatever is causing this to happen. I glance up briefly. He is holding the phone with short fat fingers and the nails on each are trimmed. I know, you’re probably wondering why I am taking in so much of a person I apparently find kind of yucky. It was just a glance, really, then I noticed that the pinky finger of his right hand did not have a trimmed nail. In fact, the nail was quite long — as long as the nail on the finger itself. The words popped into my mind instantly: the scoop. That nail was deliberately left to grow long so it could serve as a scoop that would operate in the nostril mine, digging into the lodes and pulling out deposits, to be delivered to the awaiting truck — or as we call commonly call it, the mouth.
Blargh.
He moved after a few minutes to the rear exit, a popular place for people on the bus to gather when they are not planning on getting off any time soon. Blocking the exit sticks it to the man, I guess. He puts away the cell phone and puts on some MP3 player and begins listening to music AT A VOLUME THAT EVEN PETE TOWNSEND COULD STILL HEAR. When I get off the bus, I manage to slip my skinny frame by without making body contact and in this H1N1 world, I consider it a victory.
And I think again about why I generally avoid the bus.
