Bus Stop Humor

Okay, I'll give it to you. To all of you whimsical Phoenix commuters with your fancy cars, racing too and fro as you please, I'll admit it. Riding the bus can be irritating. But for every twenty-nine clamorous, malodorous and mind numbingly mundane bus rides a person must endure in any given month, there is without fail one refreshingly original experience to be had, and today was my day.

Sitting in the sliver of (94 degree) shade that Phoenix city bus stops provide, I allowed my focus to settle on the discussion taking place between two (hopelessly intoxicated) Navajo gentlemen well into their 60's. The older of the two gentleman has taken his half guzzled 40 oz. out of its brown paper bag, torn away a strip of paper about the size of his fist and is folding and making small rips in it. Noticing that I am watching, the man waves me over and shows me his creation. Far from any complex origami structure, he presents the approximation of a small man wearing a hat, with dangling legs. Pretty one dimensional, one might falsely presume...

"Pull the legs down gently", he tells me.

He had folded this flotsom scrap in such a way that when you tug on the mans feet a bit, a little paper boner pops out.

Goldmine.

(funny enough to get a bus stop full of sweaty people laughing)

Newly reassured of his comic prowess and possessing our devoted attention, he decides to press his luck by rambling through with a sloppy joke about Elizabeth Taylor.

(Remember the last time you heard a sad joke?)

Ultimately I think he forgot he was telling a joke at all and maybe thought he really had met Elizabeth Taylor once when he was a boy. Although I'm pretty sure he just got drunk and watched a movie with her in it the night before. He never did find his way back to the punchline on that one, which is sad because there is a real shortage of Elizabeth Taylor jokes these days. After that, I noticed his breath smelled like urine. Or maybe he did. So he burped and then the bus came.