Pissin' Around on the DTA

My trip into work this morning was mildly amusing, with the two twenty something nut jobs in the back of the bus making me and my seat mate snort with delight. (I truly believe that certain nut jobs in this world need to wear aluminum foil on their heads every time they leave the house, that way, we’ll know who they are).

Listening to their conspiracy theories, vast knowledge on quantum physics and riffs on chromosomal anomalies, I began to harken back to some of my more interesting adventures on the DTA.

Perhaps my favorite story is when I was bringing home some leftovers from an office meeting. I had a small plate of bars and a small plate of fruit. Now, perhaps I will appear politically incorrect when I tell the next part of the story and if you take it that way, good! Get a fuckin spine!

The ride home often contains quite a few folks from group homes in my neighborhood. Generally, I love being a fly on the wall in their dramas, always played out at tooth loosening decibels with all the subtly of a turd in a punchbowl; but this day the bus was full and no one, including myself, was very happy.

Enter Suzy. (Names changed to protect the guilty). As I sat next to the window with my food on my lap, I tried to make myself very, very small. I had been listening to Suzy tell everyone on the bus, for at least a week, how the workers at her group home were trying to starve her. Suzy probably tips the scales at close to three hundred pounds and when she regaled me with her tale of woe a couple of days earlier, I kept at straight face and kept saying “Wow, that is TERRIBLE!” Apparently Suzy was recently discovered to be slightly overweight and this is not playing well since she is also a diabetic. “But WHAT do they know???” She demanded of me. Probably, I thought, they know your weight and glucose level…

So, Suzy sits herself down next to me and SMILES. “I am so hungry and look, you have food!” She doesn’t seem to realize two things. One, she is half sitting in my lap. Her left thigh is parked on my right thigh. Two, she stinks like three day old piss.

“Can I have some food?” She asked me loudly. Now what am I supposed to say to that? A bus full of people and their prying, judgmental eyes (and you know for a fact that I have NEVER been judgmental!). I started to open the container of fruit but she reached over and took the container of bars and helped herself. The first bar went into her mouth all at once. As soon as she was able to speak while showering me with only a few flecks of food across my face, she asked for more. Of course, I gave it to her because I am totally against the oppression of diabetics. This continued for the remainder of the ride until all of the bars were gone.

When the bus reached her stop, she belched, wiped the crumbs off her mouth, and stood up. It was obvious from looking at the seat of her pants that the sheer joy of the sugar high had caused her to lose control of her bladder.

Then, I looked down at my right thigh.

I’ve worked as a nurse and a paramedic. I’ve been bled on, puked on, shit on, and slapped around by the great American public.

But please folks, there is a time and a place for everything!