First off, I ran into an old friend of mine, not that we've ever spoken or than she would know who I am at all; I'm just a really big admirer of hers.
I don't know her name, so I've given her one, just for the sake of reference: I call her The Lady Who Can't Control Her Tongue. The first time I ever saw her, I didn't really take much notice. She appeared to be an ordinary lady sitting among other ordinary people on an ordinary bus in an ordinary city. First impressions, as we all know, however, can be very deceiving. A few minutes later, she caught my eye again. This time, she let me have a little glimpse of what would eventually make her one of my favourite Winnipeg Transit characters of all time. She would periodically and without warning let her extraordinarily long tongue out of her mouth, for what looked to me like some sort of an exploratory mission. It would snake around from left to right, and then up and down as if it were searching around in a new land or something. It almost looked as if it was looking for something in particular. All the while, the lady just sat there with an almost impossibly neutral expression on her face; like nothing about having her tongue snaking around through the air and hanging half way out of her face was out of the ordinary in the slightest. I hadn't seen her for a few years, so when I saw her earlier this week, I was overjoyed. I almost began to doubt myself when, after a few minutes her tongue had not emerged from it's den, but finally, out it came waving around frantically as if to say: "It's me! It's me!"
The other old favourite I saw this week (actually this morning to be more precise) was the Air Drummer. The Air Drummer is a man of about 30 or 35 who always sit
s on a sideways facing seat, either at the front or near the back, listens to his walkman, and plays air drums with a pair of drumsticks that he's always got with him for some reason. He's a lot of fun to watch. I've even joined him on air guitar a couple of times before. He didn't seem to care that much when I did, but at least he didn't mind.
My favourite thing about the Air Drummer isn't necessarily watching him drum (let's face it, if you've seen one air drummer, you've seen them all) but rather the reactions of the people around him.
One time, an old snooty lady sitting across from him, tapped him on the arm angrily, waited for him to press stop on his walkman and said "Do you mind?!" I was floored that she could be so annoyed by something so obviously and inherently awesome, that I interjected and said, "Actually I do. I was really enjoying his air drumming, and the only thing on this bus that is annoying me is your negativity and lack of imagination." Surprisingly, this did not win her over. At least while s
he and I were glaring at one another, the Air Drummer was able to get back to what he does best.
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