I love the smell of Xians in the morning Date Friday, April 19, 2024 - 07:56 PM PST Topic Icky People I was taking the bus to work every morning, a mellow ride with few weirdoes, whiners, or boom boxes. It was restful. I read and watched the old oak tress thru the window. I liked it. Except... There is one stop at which the bus always lingered, where a man with a megaphone stood all day preaching free form. He wears a mini umbrella on his head. His amp, when he is using a microphone, is covered in fish stickers and "Jesus loves you!" stickers. When the bus pulled up, he walked to the open door and, though his bullhorn, told us about how we were all bad people doing bad things. Normally I find this sort of thing amusing. I mean I love to see people being themselves and letting loose. And for the first few weeks this guy was a hoot. I would put down my book and listen to what he was saying. I would watch the faces of the other passengers and see what they thought of it. And I gotta' say its neat to see 20 people all look guilty at once for some unnamed "sin" on a bus. Most days his message was innocuous enough; be kind to children, call your parents, be nice to a stranger today, don't get married unless you really mean it and so forth. Nice personal messages that might even have made a personal impact on "believers" and didn't piss the rest of us off. Then one day he turned mean. Instead of "You are all sinners because you don't call your mother often enough", he put one foot on the step into the bus and told us that we were all liars and that, among us, were devil worshippers that kill babies, that we shouldn't trust each other, should turn away from each other, should read the bibble and only the bibble (and me with a murder mystery in my hands!) and on and on. I don't know that I have ever felt the vibe in a room go change so fast or go so mean before. Normally it was a nice sleepy, companionable feeling. People making room for other people and their hangovers. But that day, for the rest of the ride, people were sitting up straight and standing as far from each other as they could. The usual low hum of people talking stopped totally. We rode in a hostile, cold, fearful silence. I wonder what made him preach hate like that. I wonder what made him take it out on that bus. I wonder if he talked like that most of the time and I had just been lucky and been there only for the nice bits before. But mostly I wonder why we were already to hate each other. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=622