Lesson From The Street
Learned some deep wisdom the other day while standing outside a taqueria on the corner of Lake and Chicago. I was smoking a cigarette with JG after eating a fat meal at said taqueria.
Lesson: If you are an aging and liquored up crotchety vietnam vet of the caucasian persuasion, with long white hair, wearing a green army jacket and using a metal cane as a walking assistant for your bum leg, and you are waiting for a bus with a dozen or so non-caucasions, then here are some things you should not do;
- when the bus arrives and people line up to get on the bus, you should not stand in the back of the line and yell at people to “hurry up” and “get on the fucking bus already”,
- you should not continue to holler and use racial expletives to cajole the party in front of you to move at a clip more to your liking,
- it’s a bad idea to use your cane as a cattle prod and repeatedly stab people in the small of their back with the hope of moving the line faster, and
- you should definitely not do any of these things whilst a Minneapolis Transit Cop is sitting in his well marked transit cop car, enjoying his lunch, not 15 feet away from you.
If, however, you choose to ignore the logic and etiquette of the 21st Century, then here are just some of the consequences you should expect;
- you will be unceremoniously grabbed from behind by a transit cop (who is partly awestruck by your gall and definitely annoyed that his lunch break has ended), pulled from the first step of the bus and thrown to the ground,
- you will be laughed at loudly by anybody who witnessed this event, and your present state – sprawled out on the ground being held down by a transit cop – will be applauded and cheered greatly,
- all of your booze will be confiscated,
- you will be arrested for ‘assault’ and for being a drunk lunatic,
- you will be placed in a squad car and taken downtown,
- someone calmly watching this scene play out will bookmark it in their brain and will think about blogging it when they are back at their computer.