Thursday, February 03, 2005

bus stop

Yesterday i went back to my workshop to fetch my car. So i had to take the bus since there is nobody to send me to KL for it. When I arrive to the bus stop, i saw a guy adjusting his oversized pants while holding up his shirt with his chin. exposing his stomach and chest. I was thinking to myself 'this dude must either be very confident or just plain don't care'. i paid him no mind and proceeded to sit next to him, at the further end of the long concrete bench (polished smooth and shiny with a couple decades of rubbing hinies).

after a brief silence, the guy spoke 'do bus 14 go to KL?', i answered 'yes' in return for his polite yet heavily accented query. Then he proceeded with 'do bus 41 go to kl?' and i answered 'yups, it does'. Next he continued with 'Bus 61 goes to KL and so is bus 174'. At around this moment, i am starting to get annoyed. He is invading my sphere of comfort. Plus, i have to strain myself to understand his slurred mumblish accent.

After a few more queries, he started to exhibit an unnatural behavior, which is sticking his tounge out at an interval. By this time, i've started to brush off his queries with non-committal answers. Until he jolt me with a question or rather a request that truly wakes me up from my deep slumber and put my senses into extreme overdrive. He said ' got a ringgit? i don't the bus fare'.

Automatically, as if my body and soul have been controlled by a malicious external deamon thing from hell. I took out my wallet, pick out a one ringgit note out of my wallet and handed it the the guy while sporting a stupid grin on my face. In my mind, i was screaming 'YOU BLOODY FOOL! YOU'VE BEEN TRICKED! THIS IS A WORK OF A MASTER CONMAN'.

But it did not end there. After i've surrendered my note to him, he proceeded to show me his ray-ban shades with a broken hinge and say 'i don't have enough money to fix this shades, could you spare some to me?'. And with that, i throw away my guilt, my compassion and my guilibility and say 'uhhuh' while raising my hands up in a global sign of 'enuff is enuff'. With that, he abandoned the subject and proceeded to thank me for my one ringgit.

After that he continued to engage me in small talk, about my age, and my other personal particulars. By this time, i decided that i will lead the conversation rather than let this master conman dude from the pit of hell lead it to a point where i might have to surrender my pants and shirts.

After a while, when i recall back at his behavior earlier on, i realized that this is not a work of a very confident man, nor it is a work of a guy with nothing to lose. It is actually a work of a mentally challanged man.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i have been 'paw'ed before, but i've never been 'paw'ed by a mentally illed man. hehe

-iceroll-

Dils said...

Herm.. penah diragut..
Wallet - 5 pounds
Cash inside wallet - rm50
Phone - rm300++
The waiting for new IC to be made - priceless

robert lane said...

nice story, like the blog, these things happen a lot don't they, it a very human thing i think, regards Robert