You look a little familiar ...

I just spend a lot of time on the bus, okay? So don’t think I’m weird or anything. But my favourite thing to do on my way home from school is to sit across from interesting-looking people, or boring-looking ones, I’m not fussy, and write down every single thing about them. It’s really fun and nice and people are all so different from one another that every time I do it, I discover a little more about humanity in general. There was a guy from IGS on my bus once, and there was just something about him that was intensely beautiful, like a marble statue, and I just had to describe him because that’s what I do. So:

He is an IGS kid and he has big hands. He’s staring intensely out the window with narrowed eyes as if trying to intimidate the shop fronts. Big lips, flared nostrils, pale, washed out skin, bags under eyes, try-hard fringe. He holds his arms in a monkey grip across his stomach, veins on his hands prominent, red knuckles. He has pen marks on his calves that look like hourglasses.

He rests his head against the board; he’s sitting in the pram/wheelchair area – with his eyes closed, resting them from all that intense staring. His legs are apart, backpack resting between out-turned feet. He reaches up to press the button as though it’s some immensely taxing chore, then leans forward with his palms on his knees and drags himself up. When he gets off the bus he turns to the driver instinctively but doesn’t say anything. He walks up along Dalhousie Street, glancing back over his shoulder at the bus as we turn the corner in the opposite direction.

This guy is now so clear in my head it’s as though I’ve taken a 3D photograph of that moment and can walk around in it whenever I read back on what I’ve written. I just found it so intriguing, the strange way he held onto his own arms like he depended on it, how he narrowed his eyes at the world, those hourglasses drawn on his legs. And the exhausted, vulnerable moment when he rested his head on the board and loosened his grip on his wrists and his consciousness.

Okay, yeah I’m weird. Get over it. A big grown-up IGS kid like that can handle himself. But if you ever find yourself wondering who that weird girl is who keeps staring at you and writing notes, well, it’s just me, and I’m not stalking you or anything. I just find a ridiculous amount of pleasure in the tiniest things. Like you, apparently, so just be flattered and don’t call the police.

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