Random essay that you may or may not want to read; I kind of like it.
This is for my Humanities class; extenuating circumstances prevent me from typing it on Word (i.e. this computer is old and sucks) so I'm storing it here for the time being.
Waiting for the public bus is never fun.
There's nothing to do, unless you have a book or somesuch. But then, you run the risk of getting distracted and letting the bus pass you by -- this is at least the case at the bus stop on the corner of Hull and McGloughlin, in the Milwaukie-Clackamas area that my dad lives in. Having spent the summer at his house, home alone for weeks on end with only a bus ticket and a bike to get around, my sister and I frequented this sheltered stop, waiting for the great big white-and-blue Trimet monster to come along and swallow us up, only to spit us out in downtown Portland.
By August, we knew well how long it took to walk to said bus stop, how long we had to wait depending on when we got there, and the length of the trip we took to get to Pioneer Courthouse square. Somehow, though, we almost always got caught waiting for what felt like hours in the scorching summer heat with the clear plastic roof of the bus shelter providing no shade from the relentless sun. We splayed out on the hot cement as we waited for our air-conditioned savior on wheels.
Even on days that it wasn't unbearably hot, the boredom struck us just as hard as the sun. Fifteen minutes with nothing to do but watch traffic go by might easily have worn down my sanity after so many weeks of taking this treck had my dearest Taichou not been there to keep me company. As we sat on the curb, listening to our brains baking, we talked and laughed, making jokes out of every car that passed us by. Once, a dingy-looking white van with tinted windows had zoomed past, and out of the back window an equally dingy-looking teenager had leaned nearly his whole body out the window and made some sort of screeching catcall at us. For a minute, we sat there, bewildered, as the van drove off, and then Taichou broke the silence.
"... that guy sounded like he was taking it up the ass."
We both burst out laughing for almost five minutes straight, gasping for air and clutching our sides.
"You're right!" I exclaimed, red in the face and still giggling. "I think that was some buttrape right there."
"I don't know about rape," she said with mock seriousness. "He sounded pretty happy to me."
We cracked up some more and were still watching tears evaporate off our faces when the bus came at long last.
~
Alas, that was way back in June, and today, my precious bus-mate isn't here to make jokes with me. It's a sweltering Tuesday in late August, and even my meager clothing and copious amounts of deoderant aren't helping me keep cool. I fan myself with a neon yellow baseball cap that I'm wearing to accent my rainbow suspenders and matching knee-high socks, my favorite blue-jean short-shorts, and red tanktop. It's date night -- or, rather, day -- for me. I'm off to Pioneer Courthouse Square to meet my girl, and we plan to spend the whole day downtown, doing an activity that my grandma eloquently dubbed "dickin' around".
I'm sure that I should have worn sunscreen, because I think I can feel my thighs burning in this picturesque summer light. I sigh, toss my two ponytails over my shoulders for the umpteenth time this past hour; they're brushing the pavement I'm sitting on by about an inch. I pop my green kiwi bubble gum, stare at my scarlet sneakers, fiddle with the strap on my black and red backpack.
I am bored.
By the time the bus comes, I'm so sick of just sitting here that I've resorted to trying to tango with an invisible partner and failing because I can't remember all the steps. The other passengers on the bus stare at me as the Trimet monster pulls up and I scamper to grab my bag and hop on.
I heave a sigh of relief as the cool air washes over my sweaty face the minute the doors fold open to let me in. I grin at the driver, a nice old lady who I've come to know well on my many summer excursions via her route, and she smiles back as I show her my pass and take a seat.
Gratefully, I take a seat by the window and pull out of my backpack my enormous, I'm-an-old-school-DJ style silver headphones that are big enough to entirely consume my ears and blot out all sound except what's fed into them electronically. Stretching out, I drop my bag on the floor in front of me and get comfortable. I've taken this journey so many times in the past two and a half months that I could probably find the right stop with my eyes closed.
It'll be an hour before I need to pull the yellow wire that drapes itself over the windows of the monster and makes it stop and spit me out. So I relax in my seat and turn on my mp3 player, letting the hyperactive drumbeat of Japanese screamo death metal band Dir en Grey carry me to my happy place.
~
Pioneer Courthouse square is never as crowded as it is on a sultry summer day when all the high schoolers on break have nothing better to do than loll about on the brick steps and 'people-watch' with all their friends.
'People-watch' here being read as 'stare-at-each-other-blankly-while-drooling-all over-their-$400-designer-jeans-and-doing-nothing-productive-or-interesting'.
"They look like cows," I whisper loudly, behind my hand. Rachel almost chokes on the bite of peach she's eating, which is mostly dripping down the length of her arms.
"Am I lying?!" I exclaim, as she, with some difficulty, swallows and cracks up properly. "I'm not kidding!" I continue, "They seriously have the appearance of sun-baked bovines." I accent the word with a funny face and Rachel laughs harder. "Just sitting there, staring at each other! Do these losers have nothing better to do? Are they lost? They know that their precious mall is right there, right? Should I tell them?"
By now my voice and Rachel's giggles are loud enough to warrant attention from our slack-jawed peers, and my colors alone are naturally a minor spectacle all on their own. In other words, we have an audience.
Which is, for me, more than enough to prompt a performance.
Hoping that there's some popular gossip-girl from my school sitting up there, I wink at Rachel and step back, then make a big deal out of dropping to one knee and proclaiming at the top of my voice;
"Rachel Shenzi Joanna Banana Montague Mead." I put a hand over my heart and extend a hand for hers. She bites back a snicker. "Would you... honor me... by..." I talk slowly, loudly, and pause here for dramatic effect, crossing my fingers that the drumroll I hear in my head is loud enough to echo through my ears and add to the atmosphere.
"... letting me eat some of that peach."
A second of silence. I bite my tongue hard and Rachel does the same. Then, I raise my eyebrows at her suggestively and we both crack, bursting into hysterical laughter. I stand up and brush off my socks, and she hands the dripping golden fruit. I try to slurpp up the juice as it immediately makes a break for my elbows, but it mostly just gets all over my chin.
"It's a difficult one," she warns me belatedly, watching me struggle with the peach.
"Ya think?" I mutter, frowning at it as though this fuzzy-skinned lump of congealed fruit juice is some diabolical foe intent on diabolical things like covering me in diabolical stickiness. Or something.
"That is so what she said," Rachel snickers and I blink.
"Are you psychic or did I just say that out loud?" I blurt dumbly. She rolls her eyes and smirks, pointing to a drinking fountain that I'm certain was hiding a minute ago and popped up just for her convenience.
"You're magic!" I exclaim in awe as we trot over to it and attempt to clean ourselves off. She snorts.
"I thought you were the magic and I was the mortal."
"It's an STD."
"... that explains a lot."
I grin and raise my eyebrows. Then, "Let's go get donuts."
She blinks, missing my train of thought completely. I'm surprised she's still trying to catch it, when even I can't.
"Random tangent," I explain before she can ask. "Let's make like a tree and get the hell outta here."
Our faces split into identical grins. I bow and offer my arm like a real gentleman, and she curtsies, takes it. We ride off into the sunset skip down the street to Voodoo donuts and spend the rest of the summer just like that.
Not my best work ever, I think, but I really like it. Especially for a school essay. Feedback is nice, if you care to read it all. See y'all later!
Waiting for the public bus is never fun.
There's nothing to do, unless you have a book or somesuch. But then, you run the risk of getting distracted and letting the bus pass you by -- this is at least the case at the bus stop on the corner of Hull and McGloughlin, in the Milwaukie-Clackamas area that my dad lives in. Having spent the summer at his house, home alone for weeks on end with only a bus ticket and a bike to get around, my sister and I frequented this sheltered stop, waiting for the great big white-and-blue Trimet monster to come along and swallow us up, only to spit us out in downtown Portland.
By August, we knew well how long it took to walk to said bus stop, how long we had to wait depending on when we got there, and the length of the trip we took to get to Pioneer Courthouse square. Somehow, though, we almost always got caught waiting for what felt like hours in the scorching summer heat with the clear plastic roof of the bus shelter providing no shade from the relentless sun. We splayed out on the hot cement as we waited for our air-conditioned savior on wheels.
Even on days that it wasn't unbearably hot, the boredom struck us just as hard as the sun. Fifteen minutes with nothing to do but watch traffic go by might easily have worn down my sanity after so many weeks of taking this treck had my dearest Taichou not been there to keep me company. As we sat on the curb, listening to our brains baking, we talked and laughed, making jokes out of every car that passed us by. Once, a dingy-looking white van with tinted windows had zoomed past, and out of the back window an equally dingy-looking teenager had leaned nearly his whole body out the window and made some sort of screeching catcall at us. For a minute, we sat there, bewildered, as the van drove off, and then Taichou broke the silence.
"... that guy sounded like he was taking it up the ass."
We both burst out laughing for almost five minutes straight, gasping for air and clutching our sides.
"You're right!" I exclaimed, red in the face and still giggling. "I think that was some buttrape right there."
"I don't know about rape," she said with mock seriousness. "He sounded pretty happy to me."
We cracked up some more and were still watching tears evaporate off our faces when the bus came at long last.
~
Alas, that was way back in June, and today, my precious bus-mate isn't here to make jokes with me. It's a sweltering Tuesday in late August, and even my meager clothing and copious amounts of deoderant aren't helping me keep cool. I fan myself with a neon yellow baseball cap that I'm wearing to accent my rainbow suspenders and matching knee-high socks, my favorite blue-jean short-shorts, and red tanktop. It's date night -- or, rather, day -- for me. I'm off to Pioneer Courthouse Square to meet my girl, and we plan to spend the whole day downtown, doing an activity that my grandma eloquently dubbed "dickin' around".
I'm sure that I should have worn sunscreen, because I think I can feel my thighs burning in this picturesque summer light. I sigh, toss my two ponytails over my shoulders for the umpteenth time this past hour; they're brushing the pavement I'm sitting on by about an inch. I pop my green kiwi bubble gum, stare at my scarlet sneakers, fiddle with the strap on my black and red backpack.
I am bored.
By the time the bus comes, I'm so sick of just sitting here that I've resorted to trying to tango with an invisible partner and failing because I can't remember all the steps. The other passengers on the bus stare at me as the Trimet monster pulls up and I scamper to grab my bag and hop on.
I heave a sigh of relief as the cool air washes over my sweaty face the minute the doors fold open to let me in. I grin at the driver, a nice old lady who I've come to know well on my many summer excursions via her route, and she smiles back as I show her my pass and take a seat.
Gratefully, I take a seat by the window and pull out of my backpack my enormous, I'm-an-old-school-DJ style silver headphones that are big enough to entirely consume my ears and blot out all sound except what's fed into them electronically. Stretching out, I drop my bag on the floor in front of me and get comfortable. I've taken this journey so many times in the past two and a half months that I could probably find the right stop with my eyes closed.
It'll be an hour before I need to pull the yellow wire that drapes itself over the windows of the monster and makes it stop and spit me out. So I relax in my seat and turn on my mp3 player, letting the hyperactive drumbeat of Japanese screamo death metal band Dir en Grey carry me to my happy place.
~
Pioneer Courthouse square is never as crowded as it is on a sultry summer day when all the high schoolers on break have nothing better to do than loll about on the brick steps and 'people-watch' with all their friends.
'People-watch' here being read as 'stare-at-each-other-blankly-while-drooling-all over-their-$400-designer-jeans-and-doing-nothing-productive-or-interesting'.
"They look like cows," I whisper loudly, behind my hand. Rachel almost chokes on the bite of peach she's eating, which is mostly dripping down the length of her arms.
"Am I lying?!" I exclaim, as she, with some difficulty, swallows and cracks up properly. "I'm not kidding!" I continue, "They seriously have the appearance of sun-baked bovines." I accent the word with a funny face and Rachel laughs harder. "Just sitting there, staring at each other! Do these losers have nothing better to do? Are they lost? They know that their precious mall is right there, right? Should I tell them?"
By now my voice and Rachel's giggles are loud enough to warrant attention from our slack-jawed peers, and my colors alone are naturally a minor spectacle all on their own. In other words, we have an audience.
Which is, for me, more than enough to prompt a performance.
Hoping that there's some popular gossip-girl from my school sitting up there, I wink at Rachel and step back, then make a big deal out of dropping to one knee and proclaiming at the top of my voice;
"Rachel Shenzi Joanna Banana Montague Mead." I put a hand over my heart and extend a hand for hers. She bites back a snicker. "Would you... honor me... by..." I talk slowly, loudly, and pause here for dramatic effect, crossing my fingers that the drumroll I hear in my head is loud enough to echo through my ears and add to the atmosphere.
"... letting me eat some of that peach."
A second of silence. I bite my tongue hard and Rachel does the same. Then, I raise my eyebrows at her suggestively and we both crack, bursting into hysterical laughter. I stand up and brush off my socks, and she hands the dripping golden fruit. I try to slurpp up the juice as it immediately makes a break for my elbows, but it mostly just gets all over my chin.
"It's a difficult one," she warns me belatedly, watching me struggle with the peach.
"Ya think?" I mutter, frowning at it as though this fuzzy-skinned lump of congealed fruit juice is some diabolical foe intent on diabolical things like covering me in diabolical stickiness. Or something.
"That is so what she said," Rachel snickers and I blink.
"Are you psychic or did I just say that out loud?" I blurt dumbly. She rolls her eyes and smirks, pointing to a drinking fountain that I'm certain was hiding a minute ago and popped up just for her convenience.
"You're magic!" I exclaim in awe as we trot over to it and attempt to clean ourselves off. She snorts.
"I thought you were the magic and I was the mortal."
"It's an STD."
"... that explains a lot."
I grin and raise my eyebrows. Then, "Let's go get donuts."
She blinks, missing my train of thought completely. I'm surprised she's still trying to catch it, when even I can't.
"Random tangent," I explain before she can ask. "Let's make like a tree and get the hell outta here."
Our faces split into identical grins. I bow and offer my arm like a real gentleman, and she curtsies, takes it. We ride off into the sunset skip down the street to Voodoo donuts and spend the rest of the summer just like that.
Not my best work ever, I think, but I really like it. Especially for a school essay. Feedback is nice, if you care to read it all. See y'all later!