Three days a week I drive a great white whale of a van, and on those days the whale slowly empties and refills itself with old people. Elderly people are teaching me about patience. On average, it takes an old person two and a half minutes to get into my van, which means I can mentally drag my hand over my face about seventeen times. I'm genial with them, I comment earnestly on the weather, but I try to pose meatier questions--how long have you lived here? What did you do? Can they cram 70+ years of their lives into a 6 minute shuttle ride? They love settling into the past tense.
"I was in a mortar attack in Korea that killed everyone in my regiment but me," one man says grimly, after I ask him how he enjoyed the 4th of July. "Fireworks aren't really my thing anymore. When they start going off, I want to wave a white flag out the window or something." It hadn't always been that way. In the mid 1930's, his family used to drive from Berkeley to Oakland on independence day, and they'd lay out a picnic and watch the fireworks along the river. "But now," he says wryly, "I just don't want anybody popping off any balloons behind me or anything."
"I attended school here from '49-'53," muses another. "Not many people'd remember this, but I remember when the Fremont bridge was being built on the barges and then was floated to where it is today, lifted with screws and all that--I guess Archimedes did his job," he chuckles. "I had my two kids and was going through a divorce at the time, so that bridge was good cheap entertainment."
"You should really get a stool for us old folks," one withered woman interrupts. She has thick white hair and ironic super-hero-like sunglasses. Captain Snippy.
I wrote a mini-song about one of my favorite passengers, an older giggly woman with a horrible crop of moles all over her neck and cheek.
"Joan
Joan
You're so cute
Your socks always match
Your sweatpants suit"
In more melodramatic news, where are the bright batches of people? The papers try to convince me I don't live in a town this quiet. No matter; I have a code, one that dials into everyone. It buzzes nutso when it's time to clink ideas together.
But as of late, I'm running low on the brains that whirr and glow. I'll keep flipping for a match. One day I'll strike, and the match will catch.
oh my god, my phone just turned back on.
--ariana
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