muttered to myself @ the traffic light, Bathurst and College, TO
composed in the car, northbound on Bathurst, 1.11.13, 11:30am
He’s making his way into the bus shelter because clearly he should not get all those bandages wet. His head is a checkerboard of white band aids and scalp. A white mesh stocking holds everything in place. I guess a hat might put too much pressure on his head. He’s obviously just had some kind of electro-something-a-gram at the hospital across the street. I can’t ever remember its name.
As soon as he crosses the shelter’s threshold, the girl with the green designer rain boots and chicly patterned green scarf steps out. She’s followed by the black man in the duffel coat and the older woman wearing a rain bonnet. I haven’t seen one of those plastic rain bonnet since I was a kid. But why is everyone abandoning the shelter of acrylic and steel for the damp drizzle?
“Do you people really think he had electrodes attached to his head for something contagious? Really? Did he fart? Does he smell? Seriously that exodus was less than subtle. Man people can be so – ohhhh….”
The streetcar rolls up beside me. I wait at the green light while the green-booted girl leads the crowd from the shelter across the lane in front of my car to board the Bathurst streetcar. I think to myself, wow, it is so easy to be an asshole. “You people”? My read of the bus stop scene was so epically wrong. And like the brilliance of the film Rashomon, a reminder that there is never just one take on a sequence of events.
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