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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Life gets loony when
Lite rides TheBusI always feel guilty when I ride TheBus because of a little game a friend of mine stuck in my head years ago. He rode the bus every day to work during which he developed the politically incorrect pastime called "Spot the Loony."
Anyone who partakes of Honolulu Mass Transit knows that 99.9 percent of people who ride the bus are perfectly normal and, thankfully, that usually includes the driver. But on every bus there's also one person intensely engaged in an inter-planetary conversation with other beings or stuffing cigarette butts in his ears to snuff out bothersome CIA transmissions.
This is not a criticism, just an anthropological observation. They are generally benign folk, peaceful in their cosmic distractions, though not always, so it's a good idea to figure out who's who when you get on the bus, which is how "Spot the Loony" developed. The thing is, it's hard to spot loonies today because everyone has cell-phone ear plugs and talk out loud, apparently to no one in particular, and they appear to be very loony-like.
So I didn't play "Spot the Loony" when I rode the bus last week. I ended up sitting next to a guy named Ryan in one of those "Only in Hawaii" deals where it turned out that we both had attended Aiea High School, though years apart, but knew some of the same people. It was a chance encounter since Ryan was on his way back from Turtle Bay where he applied for a job and otherwise never would have been on that bus. And I ride the bus rarely and almost missed this particular one.
RYAN APPARENTLY was raised wrongly or something because he said he was a regular reader of Honolulu Lite and proved it by referring to columns I had written so long ago I didn't remember them. It's always fun to run into a fan after the initial fear wears off.
Then he asked: Where do you get the ideas for your columns?
I told him the truth, that frankly, writing a humor column is extraordinarily difficult, especially when the City Council or state Legislature are not in session. But I said, for the most part, I just write about things that happen to me. Weird, strange things, like the time I sat on a horse and made it urinate.
He seemed a bit incredulous and we talked about the jolly days of high school when we were highjacked of our lunch money by mokes and the like.
And just then, a large, local man getting off the bus turned to me and said, "I'll get you later white boy." I swear to God. He leered with vacant eyes, smiling, pointing and said, "This time I let you off, white boy. But next time. Next time white boy."
I was shocked because I'm a little long in the tooth to be called "boy," white or otherwise.
As the loony got off the bus and rode away on a bicycle, Ryan nodded at me nervously as if to say, "Oh, I get it now." Everyone was staring at us and I felt bad for Ryan, who had gone from Turtle Bay to Honolulu Twi-Lite Zone. I told him that after a while, you get used to it.
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com