Humanity has gotten entirely too comfortable.

I was sitting on the bus about 10 minutes ago and pried my eyes away from my phone for a minute to really soak in the scene and take inventory of the present cast of characters. Here's what I saw:

A 45 year old dude with a white Chesire Cat shirt tucked into his black jorts. The back of the shirt was a rear view of the cat.

An 80 year old man wearing a purple hat, purple sweater, and purple bag that was really a fanny pack he was just carrying around like a purse. Note that these were all different shades of purple.

A 35 year old woman with SEVEN kids aged 3-6.

A short, plump, 60 year old woman wearing a derby-like hat that was made out of pastel-colored plaid, had a fuchsia ribbon wrapped around it and 2 gigantic purple and white flowers that looked like they were straight plucked out of Fern Gully.

A large 40 year old woman in a full-out yellow poncho. Note that IT IS NOT RAINING.

A Mexican man with a hat that said "America" on it but was yellow, brown, and black and had no american symbolism on it. Where someone gets a knock-off america hat I have no clue.

A 50 year old woman who literally looks like she's dead. She's standing and moving but she looks like she's dead. This is definitely the look she was going for too. Goth just gone entirely wrong.

A homeless person in a winter coat, hood over head, passed out for the day.

Maybe 10 percent of the people on there could have run a quarter mile at 6mph.

I can't make this shit up. And note that all of this is in no way unusual. In fact this might be one of the more normal bunches of people you see on the bus. For instance last week there was a guy that kept yelling that he "needed a converter box for his TV, maaan" in various tones and intervals.



I don't know what to say, really. I just want to start a dialogue to look for solutions, because there's something that's just not right here. I'm not even sure what the root problem even IS, but I know when I'm staring at someone with the rain forest on their head that there is something out of balance in the universe.

What if we released a swarm of bears upon the nation? Millions of bears which are modified to be really slow and really, really dumb. If you can't run away from the bears or if you can't outsmart the bears, you are eaten. I try hard not to think like some elitist/darwinist/whatever, but you can't judge me until you've sat on the mid-day crosstown bus as much as I have. You just can't.

Humanity is entirely too comfortable.


Side note: this blog might just morph into a 'bus observations' blog because it writes itself and I obviously don't tend to this thing anymore.