Ding Ding Ding.

Like a synth soundtrack from a bad 1980′s action movie. The bus finally arrived, I flashed my pass to the driver as I boarded, following the ever present line into the gaping maw of the bus door.

And then it got weird.

I went to the back of the bus, where I usually sit to taunt other riders and fashion spitballs for potential use against others (kidding), and I pulled out my phone and my coffee. Kill two birds with one stone.

And the lady sat down in front of me.

Tall, black-skinned, her hair tucked under a skewed hat, a down coat covering her upper body, and a very hippy, artisan ankle length skirt flowing down to brown boots. Her dress marked her as eccentric, but nothing odd on the bus. Especially in this town. I have seen all types and all shades of crazy.

Then she turned and smiled at me.

“How ya doing?” Her voice was very high pitched, like a young girl, but her smile, and the crinkles in her skin around her mouth and her eyes made her look at least 25, maybe older.

“Good.” I reply.

“Whatcha doin?” Her eyes moved down to my phone, where I am deleting emails (ding ding ding).

“Nothing.” I hastily tuck my phone back into my pocket and focus on my coffee.

“Good for you.” Her smile is wide, her eyes are behind green rectangle frames, sliding to the halfway point between the brow and tip of her nose. Her smile is almost like a jackal’s, like she is on some joke about the kill that the other predators can only guess at. “Whatcha drinkin?”

“Coffee.”

Again: “Good for you.”

A pause, a moment in the universe passes, somewhere a child is born, an old man dies, and I am very uncertain about my choice of seat this morning.

“Your lips are so kissable. You want to kiss me?” She puckers and leans towards me. He lips are generous, slightly dry, and they draw my vision like a train wreck or an accident that I can’t turn away from.

“Um. No thanks.” I reply. I don’t know what to say. Thanks? Do you say thanks to something like that? I am very uncertain about my choice of seat at this point. Then she reaches out and rubs her hand on my chest, her palm sliding over the slick surface of my rain jacket. She moves her hand from side to side across my pectorals, and all of a sudden I feel both naked and very uncomfortable.

I have been violated. I think. I am very very very uncertain what the hell is happening to my day. I look around, and all the other riders are very focused on their books, their phones, or the scenery outside. Not one of them makes eye contact with me. What the heck should I do?

Her hands are rough, by the sound they make sliding across my chest and my shoulders, and OH MY GOD, her hand is on my cheek, gently caressing my one week old beard, moving across my chin, carefully avoiding my lips, and touching my other cheek. Her fingers linger a moment, then she turns around in her seat and looks out the window.

I think its over. I am not sure what happened. I look down at my coffee and take a drink. And a deep breath. I let it slowly, trying to release the unbelievable amount of pressure I am feeling in my head about be being touched like I just was by a complete and utter stranger.

“You just strolling the streets today?”

I look up and she is facing me again. Same smile. Same eyes. I don’t think she is attractive, something about her and this whole situation is making me feel like an alien visiting another planet. She is xenomorph from Alien, and I am Ripley, wondering how the hell I got this close to those teeth.

“Nope, going to work today.” Time is going slow. My watch, a digital, is reporting that we are obviously driving near something with immense mass, like a black hole, or a neutron star… because it appears time has stopped.

“If I didn’t have to go to school today, I would spend it with you. Look at those cheeks, I love your cheeks.”

“So does my mom.”

“Good for you.” She is still smiling. “Sure you don’t want a kiss?”

“I think my wife would object.” I am darting my eyes to other passengers. Am I going crazy? Am I the only seeing this? What did I eat this morning? Can oatmeal be a hallucinogen? All these questions take a leisurely stroll through my head… since time has stopped, they have all the time in the world. Some even stop and sit on the benches and feed the neuron pigeons.

She turns away again. I have not been rude, or mean, or anything. I smile when she smiles, I return her serves and play my part in what should be a normal conversational encounter on a bus, but has turned out to be some sort of teenage nightmare.

Her hand is on my chest again. She is rubbing the fabric in circles right above the logo, and I expect it to be like the last time… a quick and graceful caress. But she keeps going. A full minute, perhaps longer, looking over her glasses at me, her brown eyes, half lidded, evaluating me. Is she looking for a reaction? Is this a prank, a stunt, something that she can report on in her psychology class?

Something tells me deep down that she is not a psych major. She must be in one of the “special” schools downtown. And she is rubbing my chest.

“I like the way this feels.”

“Yeah its good for keeping things off of me,” I reply. In retrospect I guess that was a great thing to say, because it was imminently true. It was keeping her hands off of me. My face had been touched, true, and at that moment I wished that my jacket was covering my face too. Why don’t rain jackets come in a hazmat suit style? With the face shield integrated into the hood? I need something like that.

We reach the next stop. Time speeds up again. I wonder if I should get off here and just wait for the next bus. Twenty to thirty people board, and the bus fills up completely. A student (an actual student, thank god) sits down next to me. I use it as an excuse to pull my backpack into my lap and use it as a body shield. I look out the window and finish my coffee. I think to myself that I should have put Bailey’s in it this morning. That would have helped.

“Whatcha drinking?” I hear. I keep looking out the window.

“Tea.” Comes the reply from Mr. Student.

“Good for you.”

…

An indeterminable time later we reach the final stop. I grab my bag, stand up calmly, and step of the bus. I reach the stairs in the station, not looking behind me to see if she is following, and I bolt. I take the stairs two at a time, the sound barrier folding around me, the pressure wave building. It releases like a rubber band, snapping back, and the windows rattle as the boom travels along the length of the bus station.

Usain Bolt, suck on that. I went up stairs at Mach-freaking-one. You got nothing on me.

From here.

That about sums it up.

Like feeding ducks. Those dirty little quacking fuckers.

And at a certain level, becoming more risk adverse is kind of sad. It makes me feel like less of a human being, not being in control at the level that I thought I was in control. I guess I can mark it up to maturity, ie growing old, but I thought that I was the master of destiny when I was younger. I seriously thought that I could do anything. But through my very choices based on supposed freedom, I have found that as a result I am unable to do “anything”. I am constrained by the very choices I have made.

It’s very true, that you are nothing more than the choices you make.

I am relatively happy with the choices I have made… perhaps not fully content (the career could be better), but I think that I am what I am, and that is ok. Every one wishes they could be more I suppose.

Its just a bummer that I will never be a billionaire fighter pilot superhero genius cowboy with a detachable set of Dr. Octopus arms.

From here.

After all, I can be introspective later. When I am having a midlife crises or some shit like that. And then I can use it as an excuse the buy a sports car and get some doll hair or whatever. But anyways, I really like movies.

I hope I am able to translate my love of movies to at least one of kids. I know it is selfish of a parent to want their kids to love the same stuff they do, but I hope that at least one of my kids is able to share it with me. I hope that I can show them all the great movies I loved growing up and that at some level, they will appreciate them just as much as I did.

So of course, being a dad now, I want a movie buddy.

And I can’t wait to show Star Wars (the original trilogy)… and Indiana Jones… and Star Trek (even the crappy ones)… and the list just goes on and on and on. I want to see the looks in their eyes when Vader reveals his secret to Luke, and when Indy fights the Turbans in the Market, and when the Whales crest in the San Francisco bay. So many moments that I never really shared with anyone as a kid, I could have the chance to share by proxy with my kids.

I hope. Perhaps it is a foolish thing to want, but I am hoping there is some glimmer of it in their faces. Something that says “This is awesome”.

Its no wonder I escaped into books. Because really, where could I have gone?

It was sometime in grade school, between my 4th and 6th grade years that I found Sherlock Holmes. It was challenging reading, even though I did not have any sort of hard time with the language or many of the antiquated subjects, I felt challenged because I knew that I was one of the few people to ever crack the binding on what obviously was a donation to the school library. Perhaps a whim of a overzealous librarian, but my instincts told me it was definitely not supposed to be there. And so it has probably sat since. Or moved on to some landfill.

Pity.

Because Sherlock Holmes and the indeterminable Watson where the very companions that I needed. A brilliant, albeit, slightly sick mind, bolstered by the guiding hand of the gruff, bumbling Dr. Watson. Granted my younger mind was working off of stereotypes and cultural biases at the time, but it still made for good reading. And it made me love Sherlock Holmes in all his forms, whether they were close to the mark or not. (The mark being the literal or biased version that I imagined.)

The older BBC version was fun, although a bit dry. Watching it on Masterpiece Theater on PBS was a bit of a toll as well, since it tended to be on at odd hours. The movies never did any justice, and while the Americanized Robert Downey version was fun, it missed some of the flair that I loved about Sherlock. He may have been an addict, but he was an addict to the chase.

I just watched the first episode of the new BBC incarnation during lunch and I was bowled over. It was brilliant. And it honestly felt to be a true version of the classic Holmes I loved. The Mycroft bit at the end was great.

Awesome. I am highly anticpating the remainder of series 1, and slightly saddened it is so short. Good to know series 2 is in the queue at the BBC.

To sum up: Just Brilliant.

“It involved a shovel and a bunch of heavy sand.”

“Building a huge sand castle?”

“Ha ha, very funny… and by the way, eat shit.”

DAMN.

It makes me wonder if this is really standard team psychology. If it does matter what components make up the team, and if it matters what attitudes are in place. I would think even if you had a team og one type, invariably conflicts and relationships would “push” some of those into the other roles.

My team has its roles clearly defined. Most often, I am the leader in my teams. History has proven that it is the best place to be if I want to get stuff done and get an acceptable outcome. Not this time around though. It is shocking, I think, what my role is this time round.

I think I am the slacker. I would like to make excuses and all that, but honestly, I don’t think it would change the result. I really have not contributed much since the very beginning, and I wonder if that bothers anyone. I would guess, no, that it doesn’t. Since it is a company and not a school thing, there are structures in place to support weakness and cover up faults.

As it is in any human system.