Chubby BusMan

Back at the bus depot today and I’ve only wished a gruesome torturous death on three people. That’s less than Christmas this year, so I’d say today’s a great day. I’ve even been more sociable with coworkers. I had a twenty-minute long conversation yesterday with the cave troll wearing the goggles with the two-inch thick lenses in the break room. She told me all about her frozen shoulder while simultaneously doing her physical therapy exercises. I nodded, offered encouraging comments and even fought back judgmental stares when Jabba the Hut in the pink sweatsuit started doing weird stretches against the wall. She’s a nice troll after all, like the one from the movie ‘A Troll in Central Park.’ Not an evil troll like Rumple Stiltskin. I’m not actually sure Rumple Stiltskin was a troll, but he looked like one and haunted my dreams for the first five or six years of my life. I would always put the book behind all the others on my bookshelf… and somehow little wrinkly Rumple was always in front winking at me the next time I looked. I’m not sure if my parents were actively trying to ensure that I’d need therapy as an adult or if the book was actually possessed by the Demon spirit of Ole Rumplyskin. But anyways, Googly eyes is a nice troll and I would gladly converse with her again. So that’s my good deed for the week. Don’t call me Ghandi. But, no one is going to dispute the obvious similarities.

Today I’m laminating in the copy room so I get to watch the front of the office and judge everyone that walks past. I think my black (wannabe)friends are warming up to me. Even the scary lady in the Cadberry Egg skirt suits says hi to me every day instead of giving me the stank eye while I cower around a corner like our past relationship. Either my social skills have improved or the urban bus community had a meeting and collectively decided that the little white girl may not be Lucifer with a blonde ponytail. I’m also excited because I get to run errands today all around town. Errands = staff car. Staff car = Impala. Impala = instant acceptance into the black community. And I like to take the back roads so no one I know sees me in an Impala. And back roads are code for underdeveloped ghetto streets with no actual names. So in a sense it’s like killing two birds with one Impala. Or two-hundred love bugs.

Yesterday we auditioned people for a “mascot” for the bus system. What kind of mascot you ask? Well… my boss had the very original vision of our mascot being a bus driver. A large, bald, black bus driver with a voice like the Zataran’s guy. Way to fight the stereotypes of public transportation. You could’ve at least chosen a little puppy dog and dressed him like a bus driver. Or even a pit bull if you wanted to target our usual customers. If a talking dog drove the bus I would be far more inclined to ride than if Mike Tyson’s bitter, overweight, unathletic brother was navigating a speeding vehicular manslaughter through the streets of Tallahassee.  But despite my objections—which were more like mumbled insults and inaudible huffs—they chose Fatty McBlackerson and I’m stuck photographing him for his next “shoot.” The first shoot was just a few head shots for a poster they did when I was gone and I’m pretty sure Cedric the Entertainer in the bus uniform thought he was a Victoria’s Secret model posing on a beach in Fiji. Yesterday while my boss proudly clicked through the digital slideshow of Chubby BusMan, I channeled every fiber of social graces in my asshole being to try and choke back convulsing fits of laughter. This fat man in a little blue uniform honestly thought he was Tyra Banks before she ate the old Tyra Banks. I wonder if the photographer asked him to do the coy sexy face, or if he did it on his own thinking that THIS face is what the transit people of Tallahassee are missing in their lives.

So now I’m laminated 200 posters with a large black man giving a coy sexy face to place in dirty buses that drive around bums and crackheads. Poor fella probably thinks this is his big break.