Transit Specimens #2 - Noaa Rienecker
“You know those signs on the tracks,” he asks, standing in the middle of the aisle, addressing the conductor who’s busy fixing something on the floor, “the ones on the side of the tracks, they say There Is Help?”
The conductor unenthusiastically grunts in affirmation, not looking forward to the followup. The train has just gotten moving again after an hour delay due to a trespasser, possibly suicidal, on the tracks.
“Well,” says the tubby handlebar moustache in a ratty green sweater with a picture of a golden retriever and the words “golden retrievers” on it,
“That sign,” - he can hardly contain himself - “it was upside down!” He explodes in raucous laughter. The conductor is stonefaced.
The guy is older, caucasian, grey, wrinkled and jowled as a pug. He sounds drunk or maybe just a few bricks short of a stack. He sits down across the aisle and begins chattering in spanish at the paint-stained laborer behind me. I tune it out until I can’t anymore, it’s too funny, he seems quite fluent but his accent is so white I can’t pay attention to anything else. “La lingooa inglays es moocho mas loco,” I hear him slur.
“Why do we have feet that smell, and noses that run? Why do we call the slowest hour of the day ‘Rush Hour’? Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?”
His musings, courtesy of George Carlin, find a reception as warm as you’d get from the Moai on Easter Island so he turns to me.
“Would ya like to hear something kinda humorous, kind of ironic?”
“...what’s that?”
“Y’know those signs on the tracks, the ones that say, There Is Help?”
The conductor unenthusiastically grunts in affirmation, not looking forward to the followup. The train has just gotten moving again after an hour delay due to a trespasser, possibly suicidal, on the tracks.
“Well,” says the tubby handlebar moustache in a ratty green sweater with a picture of a golden retriever and the words “golden retrievers” on it,
“That sign,” - he can hardly contain himself - “it was upside down!” He explodes in raucous laughter. The conductor is stonefaced.
The guy is older, caucasian, grey, wrinkled and jowled as a pug. He sounds drunk or maybe just a few bricks short of a stack. He sits down across the aisle and begins chattering in spanish at the paint-stained laborer behind me. I tune it out until I can’t anymore, it’s too funny, he seems quite fluent but his accent is so white I can’t pay attention to anything else. “La lingooa inglays es moocho mas loco,” I hear him slur.
“Why do we have feet that smell, and noses that run? Why do we call the slowest hour of the day ‘Rush Hour’? Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?”
His musings, courtesy of George Carlin, find a reception as warm as you’d get from the Moai on Easter Island so he turns to me.
“Would ya like to hear something kinda humorous, kind of ironic?”
“...what’s that?”
“Y’know those signs on the tracks, the ones that say, There Is Help?”
