Pardon Me, You Have Stank on You

Ladies and gentlemen, cats and kittens, welcome to Friday, the day on which we ask ourselves, Why didn’t I get an education and ensure myself a better-paying job?

The answer, my friend, is that I don’t know. Everyone tried to talk to you about it, but you know how you are.

You didn’t listen.

But it’s not too late. The future is still before us. And now, through my steadfast and possibly erroneous belief in the oracle-y powers of my iPod, played on the Friday morning commute and carefully scrutinized, you, too, can predict your immediate future.

Aw, come on! Play along!

I Feel It All by Feist
Frankenstein by The Edgar Winter Group
I Got Mine by The Black Keys
Super Theory of Super Everything by Gogol Bordello
Believe Me, Baby by James Hunter
Rehab by Amy Winehouse
Bellbottoms by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Well look at that. It’s high school all over again. Maybe there is still time to get that education and bring home the big money.

Speaking of which, I missed you on the bus yesterday. I wish you’d been there, just so I wouldn’t have to wrack my brain for all the synonyms I know for “stench”.

Join me while I relive the olfactory trauma that was yesterday afternoon's commute…

It was an afternoon like any other afternoon. Four-thirty or so, the citizens of Minneapolis mill about, dressed both sensibly and insensibly, enduring a cold that ensures that one can keep ice cream comfortably frozen in the trunk of one’s car, and here comes the bus.

What a relief.

Hello there, Mr. Bus Driver. I always smile and nod at the bus driver. I want him to know how important he is to me, how much I want him to know my stop.

And that’s when it hits me.

Oh, the bus is packed. That’s a given. There are a couple of seats at the back, and I’m in pole position to get one. No, the placement of available seating is not what hits me.

It’s the smell. What is that smell? Like a wet bag of taco chips with a sauerkraut-juice chaser, a hint of blue cheese, a smidge of rich, loamy earth. The bus is redolent with the smell of an unwashed and potentially fascinating human being.

My nose wrinkles. I’m not good at hiding what I’m thinking. I scan the bus for possible offenders. Unfortunately, many of us are dressed alike: enormous coats, salt-stained from getting too close to dirty cars, large bags full of life’s detritus.

The stinker could be anyone.

I moved, as all right-thinking people do, to the back of the bus. Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe.

I sat down.

Next to the stinking person.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a particularly kind person, nor am I, despite my desire, a particularly tolerant person. But for the 20-some minutes that I was forced to close my eyes and think about hot-air ballooning, white-sand beaches, and amassing large amounts of seashells for no reason, I was those things.

I think the smell is still in my head.

I shall reward myself with margaritas.

Happy weekend, everyone. Don’t forget to come back tomorrow.