daytrippers Dafremen So I decide to take my son on a tour of the public transportation system. Man, I missed riding the bus. You see some of the most interesting things and people on there. Much as I love my Chevy and being on time, gimme the bus man. So we saw all kinds of cool stuff. Outside the bus at the bus stop, there was this guy sitting on his 5 and a half foot long skateboard (HUUUUGE) listening to his CD player, bass turned up(his earrings were vibrating) and trying to look tough while his UNITY patch screamed pacifist. (Guess the stress must've been on the FIST in pacifist.heheh) He kept turning around and looking at his shoulder like he maybe was being followed, or had a dandruff problem or something. Not bloody likely, since his head was shaved. Standing next to him, but unrelated(I'm guessing) was this REALLY fat chick with (yeesh...watch out for the mental imagery if you're following along in your mind, this gets really ugly)spandex bicycle shorts on, and a Tweety Bird tattoo on her calf. Tiny little Tweety Bird on this HUGE leg. I can just hear the poor little thing screaming for someone to get him off of her leg before she decided to go lounge in the grass, or graze or something. "Hewwo Mistah. She's Pweddy Fat huh? Get me off of huh weg...PWEEEASE? I'm to young to die!" So she must've been waiting for someone (the fat chick, not Tweety..Tweety Bird IS female right?), because she kept tapping her foot. Every time she did, Tweety would get up and bo0gie for a second or two and after about 6 taps, I started to get sick, so I turned to look at the people on the bus with us. There was a lady, must've been like 40, who kept looking around to see if anyone was watching, then she would pick her nose. Shortly thereafter, she'd be casually rolling her fingers around in little circles, then she'd look around again. Seeing the coast was clear, she'd -FLICK- and a little bo0ger ball would hit the window. Some bounced, some didn't. I looked away after the third time. Not sure how many she got to stick. There was this guy who kept pointing at us and giving us the OK sign. It was a little disconcerting, but he looked harmless enough, in a crazy-man-only-slits-throats-at-night sort of way. I think he might have mistaken our graveyard ritual for us reaching out to him. (Whenever my son and I went past a graveyard, we put our thumbs in the air and held our breath. It sounded like a funny thing to take up when I was younger...so I did. My boy thought it looked like fun, so now he does it too.)(Speaking of which, it should be against the law to make a graveyard that's more than a mile long...a guy could have a heart attack going past a really long one...I almost did, TWICE.) So he kept pointing at us and giving us the OK sign. He must've thought I was giving him the Thumbs Up or that I was a really big fan of the Fonz from Happy Days or something. He had this jaw that stuck REALLY far out, like, I think if he wanted to, he could have touched his teeth to his nose. It was kind of surreal, like a character from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' or something. Anyhow, he didn't stop OKing us, til he got off of the bus and YES, we stayed on until he got off. (We weren't going anywhere anyhow, just Daytrippin' around town. A Daytripper ticket costs $5.) We got off at the last station and walked to Burger King, but FIRST I had my boy give a coupon for free fries to the bus driver, cuz he had been so nice. We get to the intersection and start talking, waiting for the WALK light to come on. It did, but we missed it...we were having too much fun talking and telling each other really bad jokes. This lady on the passenger side of a Bronco that was making a right turn smiles when I tell my boy that we just missed our light. I laughed myself, because it WAS kind of funny, ESPECIALLY since we didn't have anywhere to be, no particular destination, no pressing concerns. Just a coupla the guys out Daytrippin'. Burger King is an interesting microcosm of American society. Take yer fancy schmancy Petit Le Poopoo restaurants and gimme a good old Burger King or Mickey D's or Bob Evans or Denny's ANY day man. Ambience for me is in what I can see and particularly in the faces of the people around me. Screaming kids and worn out parents, business men and business pricks alike, drinking their coffees, cramming their faces full of tasties and washing them down with Caca-Culo. Mmm mmm. Now THAT'S Americana baby. So, being the classy guy I am, I send my son ahead with his coupon for free french fries. "One coupon per customer, per visit" it says and I'll be damned if any son of MINE is going to be deprived of his very own fries. Sides, they'd been sitting in my wallet forever. The girl that takes his order ends up giving him the big VALUE fries, but when my turn comes up, I get the little dinky fries. Eh, who cares, I'm going back to the soda fountain at least 10 times this trip AND filling up my water bottle with Sprite because, hey I'm in no hurry, I've got nowhere to be. It's just me and my boy, men on the town..out Daytrippin'. We finally leave Burger King after I dispatched with this guy who kept insisting that I couldn't fill my water bottle with soda, only the cup. (I basically told him that I had to put it in the cup to fill the bottle anyhow and that, once it was in MY cup, I could dump it down my throat, in the grass, in the garbage or IN MY WATER BOTTLE if I wanted to. I really just wanted to dump it on his head, but I think with my brain, not my feelings ,and he was having a bad hair day as it was anyhow.) He went to get the manager, we walked out the door, oh I had time for this alright, but I had other plans. As we get to the bus stop, the bus pulls right up, just like the other bus driver (the one who now had a coupon for free fries stuffed into HIS wallet) had said it would, and we got on. Two Daytrippers forging ahead, leavin the bullsh*t behind. The rest of the trip was uneventful, cept for our stop at FAO Schwartz, which I thought had gone out of business. The clerk assured me that they HAD, but that they were back in business again. Well, we browsed around the store. The prices sucked and there was nothing that you could play with, plus after awhile, when it became apparent that we just browsing, the clerks became less friendly and accommodating. "Do you have any toys that my son can check out?", I asked. "No, sir I'm afraid we don't. This is a store, not a playground." I assured him that part of the toy business was getting kids excited about toys and that toys in boxes are hardly as exciting as toys you can touch. "Not EVERYONE" I told him,"can afford 65 dollars for a set of Lincoln logs on any given day of the week, but let them play with them, and they just might use that Christmas wish to get some." He agreed that this was probably true, in a strained, pretentious way, and then assured me that he would mention it to someone. Which of course he won't. Shouldn't be long til they're out of business again. I feel sorry for the sucker who lent them the money to reopen in the first place. The lady at the scented candle store was VERY gracious, even though she LOOKED like a grumpy bitch. She was Jamaican, judging by her accent, and she gave my son a catalog of all of their gifts, candles, and accessories to take home to his mama, then she let him smell all of the different scented candles that they have. It was actually cooler than we both thought it was gunna be. (We were drawn in by the Jack-O-Lanterns.) Yea, Illuminations should be in business for awhile. Eventually we mosied our way back to the bus, then the trolley, then home. I'm not sure what time it was, hadn't brought a watch, didn't need one. We came as we had left, a coupla budz with nowhere in particular to go, no plan per se, just Daytrippin man, just a coupla go0fy Daytrippers. 021015 ... flippo broken? 021015 what's it to you? who go blather from