I rode a Chicago bus yesterday to get up to the United Center for the Black Sabbath show last night, and somewhere around Milwaukee Avenue an older Mexican American fellow climbed aboard with his shoe shine box. He sat there rubbing his hands and wincing as if his hands were very much cold, in pain, or likely both. A woman seated next to must have noticed this as I did and offered him some gloves. You should have seen the look of surprise and appreciation on his face. It was a very tender moment of generosity to observe.
The glove giving gal was thin, looked to be in her late 40's or early 50's, was wearing a John Lennon type Army coat, had really short blond hair, and she had kind of a "butchy" demeanor, for lack of a better word. Actually, after the fact it dawned on me that she looked and acted a lot like like the actress, Jane Lynch, the boss in 40-Year-Old Virgin and the lesbian dog trainer in Best In Show.
"Hey, sport! Want some gloves?"
Shoe shining guy's English was not great, but that didn't stop glove-giver from telling him a bunch of information. After giving him the big and bulky gloves, she showed him the slimmer ones that she was wearing and said "These are for gun handling," and "These are for handling guns" - in case he didn't hear the first time. She said she was a retired cop and for some reason told a story about her and some other officers arresting a drug dealer. Apparently the dealer shot her partner and during the exchange giant bags of "china white" exploded everywhere and exposure to the drug led to her to being laid up in a hospital for 10 days, regularly hallucinating all through out her stay (which doesn't sound all bad).
(A good time. If you have a lot of free time in your immediate future)
Wow.
What started a nice moment of a woman performing an act of kindness for a random senior citizen quickly escalated into a crazy violent crime adventure story straight out of "Scarface." I did not see that coming at all, but you do have to expect the unexpected when you hop on a Chicago bus.
Be kind to others, readers. And watch out for accidental ingestian of dangerous amounts of "China white," whatever the hell that is.
I was out to dinner with some friends who I haven't seen in a long time, and to be honest, I barely know their wives. Some of them I hadn't even met before that night. That's how long it had been - they had met women, gotten married, and had children since last I had seen them in person. I think the last time I saw these buddies of mine was the last time I published a blog on this site. That was a joke.
The night was like this. Only in color and with slightly more casual attire.
I was kind of struggling with conversation to make because a couple of the guys that I really wanted to catch up with were way on the other end of a table of around 12 people. One couple was simultaneously checking their baby monitors on their phones as they sat down. I don't have kids yet, so I guess I can't say that I won't do the same thing, but isn't that being a little paranoid? I mean, what could you possibly see on that screen that would freak you out enough to rush home or to the telephone? I asked if the baby was doing anything cool on the screen, like juggling, or maybe spinning some plates like on an old Ed Sullivan Show. I thought that was hilarious, just picturing a baby running back and forth keeping four or five plates spinning in his little crib with that standard plate spinning song heard in the clip below. Everyone spun plates to that song, right? Then I was saying it would be a real pisser if they saw their baby doing something miraculous like that on their phone and couldn't record it. Nobody would believe them.
Nobody thought that was funny. Why am I so damned weird?
(That's the song.)
(And that's a guy spinning plates on the Ed Sullivan Show. Don't know how in the hell I couldn't find a guy spinning plates to the actual song. I guess just play them both and hit mute on the second one if you want the full effect. Ah, to hell with it.)
Then some of the wives were talking about those damned "Housewives" shows where those crazy ladies demonstrate that they haven't evolved passed middle school and are mean and caddy and gossipy about one another. There are loads of respectable mothers out there that are more deserving of their own show to be a representative of a non psycho homemaker, and what's more, some of the women on the show have their own businesses. So they shouldn't they be offended to be called housewives?
Anyway, someone was talking about the God awful British one, and I just blurted out, "Oh, she is the worst. She used to be like the voice of reason on that show, but now she is meaner than all of them. She pries and asks deeply personal questions of everyone, and then uses that info against them. And she never admits she's wrong, which I especially hate." I realized that I had said too much. I had tipped them all off that I am a man that actually watches that crap. My wife will have it on, and I get sucked into it, proving that if I want to waste time - I will force myself to get interested in just about anything. And I have been wasting way too much time lately.
Here she is. She has miniature horses and swans and shit, and she's terrible.
When I blurted out how much I knew about a specific housewife and it was evident how passionate I was about hating her so, it was hilarious to all the women on my end of the table. I made them laugh on accident. The plate spinning babies wasn't at all funny, but I got a laugh one way or another.
