He was on my heels boarding the bus. He made some comment about my putting in my fare card and it sounded to me like he was being sarcastic, because the card took an extra second to register. ‘Take your time, take your time, we are in no hurry now are are. We have all the time in the world.’ I turned to my right to see who was having all this verbiage We were about eye level, and all I noticed was that he was clean shaven, wearing a shirt and tie and his head was topped off with a hat. Later it proved to be fortunate that I sat a few seats away. He was slight of build but could he talk. His schtick was to sit near the front, claiming he was looking for his bus ticket. He rode the bus for 25 blocks, then said he was getting off because otherwise it felt like stealing a ride. Between the first statement to me, and the last one quoted, he covered the following: interracial marriage, his desire to hook up with a white woman, [he being African American] his opinion of the nice looking racially mixed couple sitting a few seats away, his trying to chat up the woman to his left who sat down unexpectedly picking up the gospel tract he had thrown on the seat, as it was vacated, just prior to her boarding. He, although wearing a watch, asked a woman across the aisle for the time. She said she didn’t know, so he began a long conversation about didn’t she have a cell phone? She made a benign remark in return when getting up to exit and he offered her a small savings can [a baby piggy bank with hearts and a bible verse on it] and she politely refused, which then pissed him off and he went on about the not accepting of free things offered by others. After she got off, the bus drove past a stop, and a nice nerdy man in the back of the bus was saying loudly, ‘excuse me, excuse’ which he then picked up on and said, ‘why are you saying that, you step on someone’s foot, if you want off, yell, stop, I want off…’ … exhausting and this transcript is only the half of it. A sigh of relief was shared by all when he exited. It was then I saw, looking out the window that he had on one black boot-shoe, one new white running shoe – about which he had been having a conversation, and a matching black shoe in his hand, along with his backpack and a bag. And I think life is complicated!