And we're back!

A man appeared through the rear doors of the bus as we pulled up to a stop. He stood dead still with his eyes closed and his palms upturned while people disembarked, and then the bus pulled out again. A pair of eyeballs poked mostly out and pointed away from each other passed me while I waited on the corner for my next bus. Behind them another man was coming down the sidewalk like water boiling over, his free arm flying, yelling "HONK! HOOONK!" and yanking on his balls the other hand. I saw another man who's feet were twisted grotesquely inward to 90˚ so he walked them over each other like a wind up toy. When the bus came I boarded behind a transvestite with enormous shoulders poking out of her pink tank top. She told the driver she would get her community pass tomorrow and asked if she could please get on. He said no problem. She said, "Do you want those?" He shook his head, ate a melting ball of chocolate covered ice cream and handed her a red paper bucket that said DIBS on it. She hummed merrily to herself as she ate the ice cream balls and sucked loudly on her fingers. She had a high visibility vest dangling from her purse and I realized I had once seen her directing traffic. Across from where I sat there was a bus ad which read in small type, Are you, and then in gigantic type DEPRESSED? and below it was a questionnaire.

I came home at night. The driver announced we were detouring off Main early so I alighted at Pender St. When I got to Main and Hastings the intersection was taped off, and for at least a block West the street was full of police. Around the corner my bus had come off the cables and was stopped in the middle of the road. The driver was at the back trying to reconnect the poles to the wires above, and in the lane between the bus and the curb a man in an electric wheelchair was darting up and down and spinning in fast, bored circles. After we got on the driver tried to lower the ramp for the man but it didn't reach the street, so he told him we would get him at the next bus stop. I sat near the back and the bus drove off. We didn't wait long for him, and when he got on he parked himself at the front, facing me. He started talking to some of the other passengers and they responded with nods. He said, "I was there for four hours today waiting for him to jump eh? Some white guy came by wasted yelling jump! jump! and the cops tackled him to the ground. My brother's down there right now praying for him."