By the Stain of my Thumb You Will Know Me

There is a season between spring and summer, as is well known amongst us city types, and it is “graffiti”;  so while you may not know from one day to the next whether or not an umbrella is in order, you will know that Scribble-Dee and Scribble-Dum have emerged from their winter’s slumber.

Here they come, climbing the steps of their mothers’ basements, up, up, up, furtively scratching their nethers only to open the front door and squint, uncomprehending, into the sky.  Lips stained with the cough syrup/Tahitian treat cocktail that is their special-ity, they move, zombie-cow-like, toward the hardware stores, intent on the purchase of aerosol-propelled pigments.

We fight the good fight, here in the Great City of Minneapolis, and while GUISE and BRAIN DEAD (not their real names) may go about marking things as if they own them, it won’t be for long.  The City and I have an agreement:  I will continue to call them with locations, and at some point before the snow flies again they will spray over it.

Unless, of course, it is at the bus stop. 

The bus stops are not the property of the city, nor are many of them the property of the Transit Commission.  Some of these bus stops have been leased out to ad agencies, where they put up posters for advanced education, advice on what to do when one discovers one has herpes, and subtle encouragement to fit more exercise into our lives.

I discovered Monday morning that my bus stop – not an advertising hub, mind you – had been hit over the weekend by a magic-marker-wielding ne’er-do-well with appallingly poor handwriting.

I don’t know what they were trying to say, but they need to try harder.

It’s the season between spring and summer people, and so I have begun doing what I am compelled to do every year about this time. 

I’m going to remove that graffiti using nothing but the drive the pioneers gave me and my poor, unsuspecting thumb.

This is MY bus stop.  And I like it neat.

Take that, Scribble-Dee.