Tuesday, March 21, 2006

turns out, I wasn't eligible anyway

Things happen in cities. Weird things. Things you don't expect.

As I was driving home from work today, I decided to drive through downtown San Fran instead of my normal route along the outskirts of the city. Unfortunately, as I was stopped at a red light, I think I found myself on the receiving end of someone's attempt at a career change.

Like I said, I pulled up to a stop at a red light. To my right was a bus, the general bane of inner city traffic. Usually, the only real danger these behemoths represent is their slow pace if you get stuck behind one. I didn't think there was any danger sitting next to one at a stop light.

I was kinda' wrong.

As I'm sitting there, something very large suddenly smacked into my windshield. Scared the bejebus out of me. When I tried to see what it was, it seemed to mostly be hidden behind my windshield wipers What I could see looked like a complete stack of Post-It notes. When I looked up at the bus next to me, I saw that I was right next an open window - the apparent source of the flying post-it note stack.

Kinda' weirded out by the whole thing, I drove down the street for a bit until I could pull into a parking lot and see what new gift I'd been forcibly given. When I got out of my car, I found I had a stack of flyers explaining about some kind of low-income based Tax Credit that I might be eligible for. It was written in five different languages and looked like something that had been produced by some kind of local government agency.

The first few sheets of this thing had been torn off already, but it was mostly still intact. It was then that I got the sense someone riding the bus had probably take a low-paying gig handing these things out, gave out one or two, and then realized that the best way to be done early was to simply launch the remainder out the bus window.

So, yeah. Weird things happen in cities that you don't expect. And now I have even more reason to fear buses.

5 comments:

EmoRiot said...

I don't see anywhere in your story that the bus is the source of the stack. You drive next to a bus and something hits your car. But you probably drove past a building, next to another car, and under a bird... do you fear any other these? How do you know it came from the bus?

Sincerely,

Bus Defender

Bug said...

It was the bus, dude. And more importantly, it was a Bus Person.

Bus People are frightening. Admit it.

seth f said...

On behalf of Bus People worldwide, I would like to defend these heinous and disparaging comments. But alas, I cannot. We are fucking frightening....

rooni said...

Bus people are weird.

I took the bus (public transportation) to and from school (high school and college) for years. I was one of them. I think that being mildly strange is part of your self-defense in an enclosed public setting.

Bug said...

Well, if that's the case, then it worked. I picked them all up and they're sitting on the passenger seat of my car.

By the way, I now blame the bus person for my dead battery. My car was fine until they hit it with their trash.

Oh, and the randomly-generated security word for this comment looks like a great Batman otomotopia fight word: kqbspowk!