Walking to the bus stop this morning, I saw a tiny old man wearing a baggy pair of cargo shorts that fell well below his knees, a Toy Machine Skateboards t-shirt, and the clunkiest, bluest pair of Crocs I have ever seen. He reminded me of that Simpsons’ episode where Homer & the kids go to Hullabalooza and Homer buys the Rasta hat and the button that says ‘Too Cool For This Planet’.

At the bus stop, I was greeted by 3 old drunks who were sipping on some sort of Steel Reservesque beer called ‘Hurricane’.

‘Hey hippy!’ said the drunkest one of them. ‘Were you here yesterday?’

Amused and having ten minutes to kill I decided to talk to them until the bus came.

‘Yeah, I’m at this stop a lot,’ I said.

‘What’s your name?’ the really drunk guy asked again.

‘Bill,’ I said. He kept repeating it here and there for the next ten minutes as though he couldn’t forget it. Ten dollars says if I see him again he won’t remember it. His name, for the record, was Bob.

My experiences at bus stops with winos, vagrants, & assorted drifters is usually pretty much the same. They’ll ask a lot of questions trying to figure out if I’m a good person to ask for five bucks from, figure out I’m a broke schmuck, and then when they learn I am not, in fact, a UT student they at least decide to talk to me about any and everything.

Bob was getting ready to miss his third straight appointment at the VA Hospital because he says his Doctor wants to force him into a Half Way house.

‘Bill,’ he said in his remembering voice that came with every use of my name, ‘how old do you think I am?’ He took a hit from his can of Hurricane.

‘Forty-seven?’ I guessed. I actually assumed he was over fifty, but no one wants to hear how old they actually are when they ask you that. As a habit, I err on the side of youth if for no other reason than to be nice.

That seemed to satisfy Bob who was cracking open another beer and offering me the first few chugs. I shrugged and tried some Hurricane. It wasn’t bad.

‘I’m fifty three,’ said Bob. ‘The Doctor says I might make it to seventy if I stop drinking.’

I offered a rhyme for his amusement that I read in a comic book:

‘There’s plenty of reasons for drinking and one has just entered my head.

If you don’t drink while you’re living, how the fuck are you gonna drink when you’re dead?’

He didn’t laugh. He just nodded in stern agreement. Silly me, I didn’t think I was waxing philosophical. I gave Bob my last pre-rolled cigarette and pulled out my bag of tobacco and rolled one for myself. We talked about Austin, Omaha, and the Cops for the remaining few minutes. The bus finally showed up and I got on and came to work.