Heidi St. John: Conservative Christian Republican (For a Change)

 

The following is mainly opinion and conjecture, not journalism. I’ve included

 links to show where I found some of the items contained herein.

I was at my local laundromat. The TV was playing with the sound off, when the

above ad appeared. I didn’t need to hear it, since the candidate’s words were also

printed on the screen. I was shocked by the inflammatory

wording. Phrases like “socialist Biden agenda”; “it’ll be weak, moderate

 ‘Republicans' [sarcastic quotation marks hers] and wannabe socialists IN OUR

WAY” [capitalization mine]; “shutting down the federal government to break Biden”;

and “the Marxist agenda today’s Democrats endorse” tend to get one’s attention, for

good or ill.

I searched for information about Heidi St. John. The first hit was for her eponymous

website, with the subheading “The Busy Mom” (heidistjohn.com). She writes books

with titles like “The Busy Homeschool Mom’s Guide to Romance” (yuck), and

“Becoming Mom Strong: How to Fight With all That’s in You For Your Family and

Your Faith" [incorrect capitalization hers].

As mentioned, she home schools her children. She also has a podcast, a blog, and

speaking engagements. Oh, and she’s running for U.S. Congress for the

3rd District of Washington State. A very busy mom, indeed.

When I visited her campaign website (heidistjohnforcongress.com), I was

particularly interested in the first sentence of the third and last paragraph 

of the mission statement on her home page:

“Together, we can make sure that Washington’s 3rd District remains a beautiful and

safe place to live, work, and raise our families for generations to come.”

The second sentence of the paragraph goes on to say:

"The United States of America is an idea worth sacrificing for, and the American

dream must be preserved and safeguarded for the sake of our children and grand-

children."

Wow.

I suppose one of the things that first caught my attention was the fact that on my

Samsung mobile device, that first sentence is mysteriously bold-faced. Oddly

enough, in both Chrome and Firefox on my laptop, the sentence doesn’t appear in

bold-face. I’ve included a screenshot from my phone to prove it.

 

 

Just 26 little words in that first sentence. Innocent enough on the face of it, I

suppose. But they rang a faint alarm bell in my mind. They reminded me of another

set of just 14 words, which goes like this:

"We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

If you don’t recognize that phrase, it was spoken by infamous white supremacist,

David Eden Lane (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words).

The phrase has been picked up and repeated by many Neo-Nazis and white

supremacists and is often coupled with the number 88 (H is the eighth letter of the

alphabet, so HH, for “Heil Hitler”) in tattoos and written on vehicles as a code for,

well, being a fucking asshole.

There is another 14-word sentence that goes along with the first one: "Because the

beauty of the White Aryan woman must not perish from the Earth.”

So a total of 28 words, only two more than Heidi’s pithy little sentence. Heidi’s

phrase and the two “14 words” certainly share a lot of the same words, or similar

ones, as if she made heavy use of a thesaurus to try to dress them up differently:

Heidi: “we can make sure”

David: “we must secure”

Heidi: “beautiful”

David: “beauty”

Heidi: “place to live”

David: “existence”

Heidi: “raise our families”

David: : "our people”

Heidi: “for generations to come”

David: “future for white children”

And to compare some words from Heidi’s second sentence to one of Lane’s

14-word bon mots:

Heidi: “the American dream must be preserved and safeguarded”

David: “must not perish from the Earth”

Maybe I’m making too much of this. Perhaps I’m just being paranoid. I sure hope so.

But given the current rush toward Christofacism by the Republican Party, I don’t

have a good feeling about this. Also, the geographical location of Heidi is concerning.

For a little background, Washington State’s third district is in the southwestern-most

corner of the state. The largest city in the district is Vancouver, just a short drive

across the Columbia River from Portland. Politically the two cities couldn’t be more

different. Portland is famous for being “weird”, but also for being very liberal in a

state where it was once illegal to be Black. Vancouver is very conservative. Many of

the officers of the Portland Police Bureau live in Vancouver. This is probably mostly

because Washington has no income tax. By contrast, Oregon has no sales tax. So

many people who work in Portland live in Vancouver, and cross the Interstate Bridge

to shop.

Many of the members of the extreme alt-right groups who fought with Antifa on the

streets of Portland also came from Vancouver and surrounding communities. Thus

plenty of Portland police live right amongst the violent haters. There were many

documented incidents during the literal 100 days of civil unrest in the summer of

2020 where it was obvious that Portland Police Bureau was giving preferential

treatment to the alt-right.

It’s late, I’m tired, and I feel like I’m starting to ramble. To sum up, I think that

Heidi’s mission statement is a thinly veiled dog whistle for white, Christian,

Neo-fascists. And that scares me.

Ms. Scarlet's Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Caption Competition!

 It's here! It's official. It's fabulous!

Ms. Scarlet's caption competition for the Freakin' Green Elf Shorts is upon us! See it HERE to enter your captions, or just ogle the spectacle and read captions entries by others, both from those who wish to win the Shorts, and from those who don't, for some odd reason.

Freakin' Green Elf Shorts History Update

Well, folks, depending on where you are on this old globe of ours, you are only a day or two away from Ms. Scarlet's new Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Caption Competition. In honor of the occasion, I have added a new update to my Continuing History of the Freakin' Green Elf Shorts, highlighting the many contributions to the world of the Shorts by Inexplicable DeVice. Please won't you take a look?

Freakin' Green Elf Shorts Caption Competition Continues!

Ms. Scarlet, as seen in her previous FGES competition

Big news for fans of the Freakin' Green Elf Shorts! Ms. Scarlet, the current keeper of the Shorts, just oh, so casually announced a date for the long awaited continuation of the FGES Caption Competition. You can check out the deets (brief as they are) at her blog, but if you can't be arsed, basically the competition will begin on the 1st of January 2022, and a winner will be announced on the 16th* of January (GMT), of the same year even! Please enter your captions, and let's keep those Shorts a-movin'!

In other FGES news, I noticed the other day that the link to my Continuing History of the Shorts, over in the upper right corner of my blog, was not working. Upon further investigation, I discovered that a couple of extra letters had somehow gotten into the URL embedded in the image, rendering it useless. I don't know how that happened, or how long it had been going on. The problem has been fixed, and my apologies to anyone who may have attempted to use that defective link.

My Continuing History of the FGES will be updated presently to include these most recent developments, along with a few tangential references to the Shorts, which deserve to be in the record, but I was waiting for more definite news of their fate before adding to the history. Ah, who am I kidding? I'm just lazy!

Also, IDV was kind enough to create an updated map of the global travels of the FGES. It can be seen at the top of this blog. Thanks, IDV.

*Updated January 2, 2022 (PST) to reflect change by Ms. Scarlet of date of announcement of winner from her original post. Current caption competition is HERE.

Tr*mpy the Snowman

 

Rimpy and the THNGVB Saturday, Part III: The Sickening Sequel

"Welcome aboard! Excuse me while I close this door between me and you."

This follow-up to the saga of that rotten Saturday should be short and sour. It's actually not funny at all, even though this purports to be a comedy blog, but I feel compelled to share it because, well...I'm compulsive -- and obsessive. Also, I said I would, and I'm too lazy to go back and remove mentions of this promised third part from the previous two posts. Besides, maybe some of you are still interested in hearing about it. Right? Yeah, let's go with that.

There is another recurring passenger who haunts the line 75, a female version of Little Leon. I'll call her "Sheon". Sheon is homeless and mentally ill, and likely also on drugs, probably meth. She is filthy and very skinny, and also unhealthy-looking, as one might expect. She never pays for fare, instead mumbling some excuse as she skitters, spider-like, to a seat. She can't sit still, nor keep her mouth shut. She almost always starts trouble, such as berating other passengers. I had previously been forced to ask her to get off my bus.

Some weeks, or maybe a couple of months, after the THNGVB Saturday, I was again driving the line 75, and had the misfortune of picking up Sheon. She bypassed the fare box, but took a mask from the dispenser that all buses and trains now have, and even put it on her face. Sadly, she kept pulling the mask away from her mouth in order to speak, which was constantly. Another female passenger asked her to keep her mask on. Sheon began yelling at the other woman. I tried to intercede via my public address microphone, asking for calm, and reminding Sheon that masks must be worn while riding the bus, like all the signage and the recorded announcements say.

Now this may sound totally insane, but we TriMet drivers are not given any authority to enforce the mask "rule". Neither is there anyone with such authority riding buses or trains. There are such people, but I have no idea what they do with their well-compensated time. I used sarcastic quotation marks because what good is a rule if it is not enforced? The most we can do is ask a passenger to wear a mask, and if they won't comply, we can press a special button (that was installed shortly after the pandemic started) on our MDT touch screens which sends a canned text message to the effect of "mask non-compliance". This isn't like pressing the silent alarm during a bank robbery -- doughty warriors in Tyvek suits aren't going to rappel from a hovering helicopter and remove the potential Patient Zero from the bus. I'm sure all the button does is record location and time for statistical purposes, much like our useless "Fare Evasion" and "Near Miss" ("almost accident", not "proximity of a comely maiden") buttons. I suppose if the "No Mask" button is pressed enough times at the same place and time, a supervisor might deign to investigate and hopefully address the situation.

Meanwhile, the interaction between Sheon and the irate passenger was getting out of hand. I could no longer safely operate the bus under these conditions. For good or ill, I arrived at the lovely Hollywood Transit Center at this point. I secured the bus, and told Sheon that she was going to have to leave. Of course, she refused. I had no choice but to put in a request to dispatch for help in getting her off my bus.

True fact about me: I'm a slow learner. I hadn't gleaned any wisdom from the errors I had made in dealing with Leon on the THNGVBS. When dispatch contacted me via radio, I once again made the mistake of listing all of Sheon's offenses: fare evasion, mask non-compliance, use of abusive language, and harassment of another passenger. Eight years of working for another transit system that actually gave a damn about those things had ruined me for working at TriMet.

As dispatchers seem wont do, this one focused on one of the less-important issues, such as fare evasion or language, so I was getting nowhere, slowly. While I was on the radio, Sheon came up beside my seat and was jabbering something at me. Our newest buses came from the factory with little barrier doors with a sliding window between the driver and the rest of the bus. It's far from being a totally enclosed compartment, like I've seen in other bus systems, but it provides some level of protection from angry passengers. The buses with these doors had been ordered before the pandemic as a means of reducing assaults upon drivers, and plans were made to eventually retrofit them on older buses. However, after COVID came around, TriMet realized the barriers were also useful for slowing the spread of the virus, so they attempted to speed up their order for more doors. Unfortunately, pretty much every transit system in America was doing the same thing, so it took awhile to receive the doors. I'll bet the makers of those doors are now sitting on huge piles of cash, Joker-style, and raising glasses of expensive champagne in toast to the pandemic.

I tried to tell Sheon that the main reason I wanted her off my bus was because she was repeatedly refusing to keep her mask in place. It was then that she stuck her hideous face around the barrier and coughed directly at me. I was so angry that I slammed the handset of the radio back into its cradle. This startled her, and she jumped out, yelling, "You're not going to hit me!" I wasn't planning to hit her, even though I wanted to. I seized upon this opportunity and shut the door as quickly as I could. Now she was off my bus! Yay! I called dispatch and let them know the problematic passenger had deboarded and their "help" was no longer needed.

Boy, was I wrong. She may have been off the bus, but she wasn't done with me yet. Much like that previous weirdo at the Hollywood Transit Center on the THNGVBS, she got in front of the bus, preventing me from moving. She also put down the empty bike rack on the front of the bus. This seems to be a popular tactic with angry, crazy people. She then would feint like she was moving aside, then get back in front of my bus as I attempted to try to resume my route. She kept this up for the same couple of blocks as the idiot from earlier. I couldn't believe that a near identical incident was happening twice in the exact same place. I tried contacting dispatch again, which is not easy while driving. Eventually she got out of the way, and I was able to leave.

Probably my biggest mistake that day was not immediately reporting to dispatch that Sheon had deliberately coughed at me. If I had, I could have gotten TriMet to pay for me to get tested for COVID. That probably would have been the responsible thing to do, considering the risk to myself and others. Since Sheon is known to the transit authority, some contact tracing could probably have been done if I had tested positive. I was just too upset to think straight. Actually, I was very tempted to quit on the spot. Who needs such shit -- risking your life and health transporting hostile, ungrateful, potentially dangerous people? But a cooler, or perhaps stupider, head prevailed.

I did complain to a manager about what had happened, after I had fumed about it for a couple of days. I was tempted to try to file a police report and maybe charge Sheon with assault. Perhaps that way she could be forced to be tested for the virus. But by then there wasn't much my wonderful employers were able, or willing, to do for me, other than to offer to test me for 'rona. Perhaps irresponsibly, I declined. I was feeling defeated. Obviously, time has shown that I didn't contract the disease.

I did some checking on my own, and I found out that purposefully coughing at someone and putting them in fear and at risk of infection is only considered assault if the assailant already KNOWS they are infectious. Sheon apparently wasn't infectious, or if she was, I escaped unscathed. Even if she had been infected, she might not have known it, which still makes her antagonistic action just as reprehensible.

It's absolutely disgusting to me that there are people who are willing to weaponize their sputum during a pandemic. In the case of Sheon, she probably doesn't have much control over her actions, but I have seen videos of otherwise sane people who are just stupid assholes coughing and spitting at hapless employees who have asked them to do the simple courtesy of wearing a bit of fabric over their gross gobs and snouts.

I did learn one thing from all this: like cops, don't talk to dispatchers. I haven't had to since that day, but if I ever again have to contact dispatch about a trouble-making passenger, I will stick to one relevant issue, and leave out any other offenses the passenger may have committed, so the dispatcher can't chose some lesser evil to ignore.

I also haven't seen Sheon since that day. Like the old woman who swallowed a fly, perhaps she died. I don't wish that on her, but, "she who lives by the sword", amiright? If she did die of the 'rona, and she had it that day, perhaps my mask saved me, so my getting tested wouldn't have changed anything, but it augers ill for anyone else who was in close proximity to her. It's scary to contemplate, and doing so for too long really makes me question my choice of careers. I can't wait for retirement. I hope I live that long.

THE END

Rimpy and the THNGVB Saturday, Part II: The F*ckening

Old men forget; Yet all shall be forgot,

But he'll remember, with advantages,

What feats he did that day.

Well, I'd better try to get the actual events of that dreadful Saturday down on paper before I forget anything else.

As I mentioned previously, the route 75 was one of the first routes I drove when I started at TriMet. I drove it three work days a week, and I'll admit I had gotten pretty tired of it. I had an early morning commuter run. It was very busy, and I had a hard time keeping the run on schedule. Therefore I had lots of grumpy-ass passengers who usually expressed their displeasure at my tardiness by glaring at me and not acknowledging my greetings. Some actually expressed their displeasure verbally, usually by helpfully observing, "Running a little late, huh?"

If I hadn't mentioned before, we drivers get a chance to change our schedules every three months by bidding on work we want. Being low on the seniority totem pole, I often get stuck with runs I'd rather not have had. A few "sign-up" periods in, I once again got a 75, but only on a Saturday. I had begun to think of weekend runs as being a little more relaxed than their weekday counterparts. You don't get as many commuters, and there's a little less traffic to contend with. This was the first Saturday of the new sign-up, and I had high hopes for a better experience. Fool!

The first of that day's runs (other drivers may use the term differently, but to me one direction of a route is a "run", two back to back runs equal a loop) was from St. John's to Milwaukie. One of the busier stops, near St. John's, is called the Interstate/Lombard Transit Center. As in "Interstate Street" (not the Interstate Highway System) and Lombard Street. Interstate Street used to be the main connection between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington, on the other side of the Columbia River, via the "Interstate Bridge". Later Interstate 5 was built nearby and connected the two states, with the addition of a second Interstate Bridge to handle increased traffic.

Interstate Bridge. Yes, it's a drawbridge. The only spot on the 1,000+ mile length of Interstate 5 where traffic has to come to a standstill.

Interstate/Lombard Transit Center (ILTC) is a transfer point between several bus lines and a MAX light rail line. It's also where you tend to get your more difficult passengers. I was just about to depart from ILTC when a man came running up to the door. I reluctantly opened it back up. The man came aboard and said, "I'll be quiet" and rushed back to a seat without paying. I wasn't fussed about the non-payment. If TriMet doesn't care, why should I? I was more concerned about his statement. After many years of bus driving, I've learned it's never a good sign if someone opens with such a declaration to a question no one asked. In fact, if they do, you can be pretty sure they're going to do exactly the opposite of whatever they promised not to do.

Shortly after we got under way, the man asked me something, but he addressed me as "King Bus Driver". It was then that I realized that he was Little Leon. In my defense, I had only met Leon a couple of times up until this point. There is nothing remarkable about his appearance. He looks very much like many other weird people who ride the bus every day. Besides, even if I had recognized him before he boarded, there was not much I could have done to keep him off. Nor did I have any known reason to forbid him. I only found out later about his on-going sort-of, kind-of, semi-permanent exclusion from the transit system.

It also wasn't long before Leon broke his promise to keep quiet. He soon started ranting to no one and everyone about god knows what. I asked him politely to keep it down, with no effect. However, he soon started calling someone a "faggot". I don't know if his victim was actually on the bus or imaginary, but hate speech is something I will not tolerate on my bus. I pulled over, opened the doors, and told Leon that he would have to get off. Of course, he refused.

Then, of course, I had a choice: I could either relent and let him stay on board, or tie up the bus and all the other passengers while trying to get help in getting Leon off my bus. I hate to delay innocent people, but I felt I needed to stand firm. For good or ill, we drivers cannot directly initiate a call to dispatch via the two-way radio. I pressed a button on my MDT (Mobile Data Terminal) to let a dispatcher know I needed to talk to them. When they responded, I said I had Leon on board, and then I listed the things he was doing wrong. Unfortunately, I also mentioned that he had evaded fare. I knew that in and of itself, that was a total non-issue for TriMet, but at my previous transit system, it actually meant something. I guess I was falling back on old habits, plus I was hoping that if I listed everything Leon had done against the rules, it might get me some help. But of course, the dispatcher chose to focus on the fare thing. He also wanted to know if I was sure it was Leon, because they had had a lot of mistaken identifications of him. Of course I was sure it was him, and not just because of his little catch phrase. By now he had already referred to himself in the third person several times. I reminded the dispatcher that he was using hate language. The dispatcher wanted to know what kind. I was reluctant to utter the word myself, so I stupidly said he was calling someone the "f-word", but I didn't elaborate that I meant a derogatory term for homosexuals. Naturally, the dispatcher thought I meant "fuck", and started going on about how we couldn't infringe on Leon's first amendment rights and blah blah blah. I could already see that I wasn't going to get any help. The dispatcher told me I needed to let Leon ride. So after wasting several minutes of my and the passengers' time, I was once again under way, very behind schedule. Leon had won that round.

He carried on for awhile longer, then finally quieted down. Soon I realized he was asleep. I didn't look forward to having to deal with him at the other end of the line, but at least the bus was peaceful for the remainder of the trip.

My layover in Milwaukie was only about 15 minutes long, and Leon had eaten up about half of that. I just wanted to eat a snack (I'm hypoglycemic, so snacking is important, and not just an indulgence) and trudge the two blocks to a TriMet toilet. Instead I had to wake up Leon and tell him the ride was over. It was the middle of the day and there were plenty of other bus lines, and the MAX, that he could bother, so it's not like I was dumping him in the middle of nowhere, as much as I would have liked that. But he again refused to get out. So I had to contact dispatch again. This time they agreed to send the police to remove him from my bus. Gee, if only they had done that the first time!

Leon voluntarily left before PD could arrive, so I contacted dispatch again and told them to cancel the call. PD arrived anyway, and spoke with Leon, but of course, nothing came of it. He hadn't actually broken any laws.

I had my snack, and my piss, and was able to get back on the road on time for my next trip to St. John's, so I can't blame Leon for what happened after that. He just set the mood for what turned out to be a very bad day.

A few blocks from the Milwaukie Transit Center, line 75 crosses a very busy state highway. Right close to that are the freight train tracks mentioned in the last installment. TriMet, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to put a bus stop right on the corner before that highway, in a right-turn lane.

The controversial intersection. The blue bus stop symbol is where my soul left my body.

You can also go straight from that right-turn lane, but if it weren't for that bus stop, you could get in the lane to the left and avoid the turn lane altogether. When I approached the intersection, a train was just coming to a stop on the tracks on the other side of the highway. There was one car ahead of me in the right turn lane. The traffic signal stays red while the train is on the tracks to keep people from entering the intersection and blocking it for cross traffic. I could see the end of the train a short distance past the street I was on. I knew it would be a simple matter to use the pre-planned detour in order to get around the train. I just had to wait for the guy in front of me to make the right on the red (legal here), then I could go. So I waited. And waited. And waited. The guy apparently had no interest in going right. Obviously he wanted to go straight, and seemed content to wait out the train. Perhaps he was not familiar with how to by-pass the train. Or maybe he just didn't care. Cars in the left lane were making U-turns and find other routes. My bus is too long to make a U-turn. I could have gotten into the left lane, but then I would have to make my right in front of the other car. Highly illegal. Not recommended. Some of the drivers behind me were also making U-turns, but some opted to wait it out. I gently tooted my horn in an effort to get him to look in his rear-view mirror. I pointed to the right, hoping he'd take the hint. No luck.

Now you're probably thinking: why not get out and talk to the guy? I did, just not soon enough. Why is that, you ask? Well, it has been my experience in other situations where I've been stuck in my bus waiting for some situation to change, that by the time I've secured my bus and clambered out to try to deal with it, the situation suddenly resolves itself, then it's a mad scramble getting back into the bus and attempting to get underway while the people behind you honk impatiently. So I probably waited to long before finally getting out. I stood next to the man's car, waved to get his attention, got him to roll down his window, then politely (thought I SOOOO didn't feel like being polite to this absolute moron) asked if he wouldn't mind making the right because he was holding up a whole bunch of people. He consented. He genuinely looked like it never once occurred to him that he might be blocking traffic. I don't know how he missed the big ol' bus behind him. I guess in his world everyone is willing to just sit and wait for train when it's totally not necessary.

So finally I got to do my train detour, and now I was once again on my merry way, a good 18 minutes late. Yes, 18 minutes. I have to blame myself for some of that because I didn't get out and talk to the guy sooner. Of course, any one of the people in the cars behind me could have done the same. They may not have been able to see the car in front of me, and so assumed the bus and its driver were the problem. I was half-expecting to see someone get out of a car and stalk up to my door or window to yell at me, then see the real culprit. Why did it fall to me to have to do something about the whole sordid mess?

Anyway, I was now so late that dispatch said they would send out an "extra service" (back up) bus out to try to pick up some of the slack. I reasoned that even though it was Saturday, my "follower" (the next bus on that line) couldn't be far behind me. I was hoping they would tell me to go to "drop-off-only" mode so I might have a chance to get caught up. They eventually did, but not soon enough, so I was further delayed, having to stop and pick up irate passengers. There is an unfortunate phenomenon that happens when you are running so late. If you're, say, 15 minutes late, and your follower is scheduled 15 minutes after you, then you start getting not only the normal number of passengers that you would have picked up had you been on time, but you also start getting the passengers who have turned up at a stop expecting your follower. This only slows you down more, and is why drop-off-only is so important in such situations. This is what was happening to me while dispatch dragged their feet about putting me in drop-off-only.

When you're that late, minor annoyances and inconveniences that wouldn't bother you if you were on time become huge annoyances. For example, I got an old lady with a large shopping basket who needed the wheelchair ramp for her trolley. This is a fair use of the ramp, but this old lady was extremely particular about just where she wanted the ramp deployed at each end of her very short trip. My first choice of stopping points at her destination, wasn't to her liking, so I had to move the bus slightly. That may not sound like much, but when you use the ramp, you have to put the bus in neutral and set the parking brake, so small adjustments to the bus's position can become a considerable investment of precious seconds.

Finally, dispatch told me that when I got to the Hollywood Transit Center, I would be in drop-off-only until I got to the end of the line. I then wondered, "So, does that mean I should or should not pick up anyone who is waiting at Hollywood TC?", but I was already too frazzled to try to have that conversation with dispatch while driving.

Dispatch has the ability to remotely change the destination signs on buses, and they switched mine to "Drop Off Only" just before I arrived at Hollywood TC. I breathed a sigh of relief and thought, "Well, that answers my question". Of course, if there were people waiting at the stop, it was going to be awkward to tell them they weren't allowed to board my bus. Perhaps that thought unconsciously influenced my next mistake. Remember how I said that St. John's-bound buses stop at a different spot in the Hollywood TC from Milwaukie-bound buses? Well, it had been several months since I had last driven the 75, and I sort of forgot that little fact. I dropped the passengers who wanted off at the wrong spot, which made no-never-mind to them, but was actually good for me, because there was no one waiting to board at that spot. As I began to pull out, I realized my mistake. As it turns out, there was one guy waiting at the correct spot. I was surprised there weren't more. The extra service bus may have already been through there and picked up whoever must surely have been waiting for me, but that one guy must have walked up after it had departed.

I faltered for a second in irresolution: should I get this guy, or not? I decided not to, because doing so would sort of defeat the purpose of being in drop off only mode. Besides, he had a chance to read my sign. He'd just have to deal with it.

Well, either he was illiterate, or he didn't notice the sign. I passed him up, but then had to wait at the stop light at the exit of the TC. The guy, who looked like a bit of young street person, started crossing the intersection on the diagonal. When my light changed, and I started rolling, he continued to saunter in front of my bus. He was apparently getting his revenge on me for not picking him up. He didn't try to get me to let him on. I doubt I would have. When someone has been that unreasonable about trying to board your bus at an unauthorized location, they don't tend to suddenly get reasonable once they're on board. He kept up this little routine for a couple of blocks. Every time I would stop to avoid running him over, he would move toward the sidewalk. But just as soon as I would start moving, he'd get back in front of me. Finally he let me go on my way. I guess he had shown me. I was just shaking after that. It's not easy to drive a bus when your nerves are shot.

That was last major thing that happened that day. If I've forgotten anything else, I hope I never remember. I made it to St. John's, and was even able to start my next run on time, I think. Either way, my day eventually evened out, and finally I got to go home and scream into my pillow before falling into a fitful sleep.

As previously mentioned, there is a sequel to the incident at the Hollywood Transit Center, but we shall have to wait until Part III for that. Thanks for coming on this tawdry journey with me.