The Plaid Pladd

I live about a half hour walk from campus so I almost always take the bus. The only bus that goes by our apartment complex is the lovable J Route that, during certain times of the morning, becomes so crowded with students from the apartments around here that we are forced to stand awkwardly against each other and drive by most stops after mine. The first week it was fun to watch the people at these stops throw up their hands angrily as the bus sped by, but now they’re quietly resigned. You’d think that with us all being students, you’d get to know the same faces of the same people going to the same classes at the same time every week. This, strangely, is not so. I always seem to be waiting at the stop next to completely ridic people whom I then never see again. I always want to surreptitiously take their picture with my phone, but that would be kind of obvious. Instead, I have started keeping a list.

List of Ridiculous People I Have Seen On the Bus
1. Guy in trench coat and Dr. Seuss hat. Added weirdness: this was before it got cold out, so there was really no reason for long sleeves.
2. Mystical Gypsy Fortune Teller Lady. You know that stereotypical character the heroes in the movie/tv show always consult once randomly about their fate/birth mark/mysterious past? I sat next to her on the bus once.
3. Girl with large, oddly red layer cake. It was like blood red, and huge.
4. Small child that stared at me, making roaring noises for fifteen minutes. ROARRRRRR!
5. Mormons. Asking everyone who got on what questions they would like to ask God. I said, “Why are manatees such useless wastes of space?” They chose to ignore this, but my follow up question would have been, “If he’s so omnipotent, why couldn’t he make them to get out of the way of my speed boat?”
6. No Pants Girl. First day of legit chilly weather and she was wearing a sheer skirt and a thong. How do I know she was wearing a thong? Because her skirt had no lining so I could see it. Well, more like I could see that she wasn’t wearing anything else more substantive. She seemed confused.
7. Sleepologist girl. Today I overheard this conversation–actually, overheard is maybe a misleading word. I was standing five people away from these two and couldn’t HELP hearing because the one was pretty much shouting:
Girl 2: cuts everyone in line to stand in front of Girl 1’s face HEY!
Girl 1: makes some kind of sleepy grunt noise
Girl 2: HEY! What time did you go to bed last night?
Girl 1: I don’t know.
Girl 2: WHAT TIME?
Girl 1: I really don’t know.
Girl 2: I WILL NOT ASK YOU AGAIN!!!
Girl 1: I guess around 3.
Girl 2: THREE?!?!?! You NEED to SLEEP!
Girl 1: I did sleep.
Girl 2: ONLY FOUR HOURS IS NOT SLEEP.
Then they had a brief debate about exactly how many hours and minutes she’d slept. This seemed to be confused by the fact that they kept hearing the other say different times, and neither seemed to be able to subtract in base sixty
Girl 2: Well, whatever. THERE IS NO WAY THAT WAS REM SLEEP!
Girl 1: Rapid eye movement sleep.
Girl 2: NO, you need AT LEAST six hours a night. And NO sleeping in the library! And no excuses about coffee.
Girl 1: It was Mountain Dew or whatever.
Girl 2: NO EXCUSE! Watch TV for thirty minutes under the blanket, lie on your bed in the dark, close your eyes, and try to think calming thoughts.
The bus arrives. I sit near the front. They sit in the back. Despite other people on the bus, I still hear vague shouts of “SLEEP!” and “THIS IS NOT A REQUEST!” throughout the bus ride.

I can only assume Girl 2 was some kind of sleepologist in training and Girl 1 was her test subject who kept refusing to follow orders.