There is a FRIENDBURST QUIZ that
kind of goes with this blog. You should take it first.  Click this link to open in a new window.

“That’s what I forgot!” she said,  “The book I’m reading!”

I looked up from my pages of the sci-fi novel I’m currently reading to look at the girl sitting across from me on the bus.  I was in the midst of the long leg of my commute, a good 40 minutes on Hwy 99 from Edmonds to Everett.  We were each sitting in those seats running parallel to the wheel wells of the bus, so we faced each other.

She sparked my interest.  Her clothes were… interesting.  Unique.  She wasn’t trying to be flashy or trying to make some “look at me, I’m way out there!” point. Classy, but different and not pretentious.  In the 40 degree rainy winter weather, there wasn’t any skin showing, but there was something about her appearance I found attractive. She was  full in the thighs; not dainty but not fat.  She wore heavy eyeliner around slitted, sparkling eyes.  Her pearlescent nails clutched a Starbucks coffee.  Hmm… and she read books!  I wanted to talk to this girl!

“Oh really?  What are you reading?” I asked.

“It’s called Candy Bomber.  It’s a book about the Berlin Airlift told from the point of view of the Berliners.”

Oh wow. Cute.  Literate.  Interested in history.

“My dad wanted me to read it.  We were going to discuss it when we got together.”

Now, this didn’t occur to me at the time, but by the fact that she was already talking about her father, meant she’s probably into older men.  Please don’t make me to be some MTRGesque predator out stalking 20-something females. I haven’t been on a date in two freekin years! Okay?  The holidays are a cold time to be alone.   I was more interested in the fact that she read than her age…  ANYWAYS…on with the story.

“But he passed away,” she continued, looking down at the floor of the bus.

Okay, nothing in my 3-page pamphlet of  “how to pick up girls” prepared me for responding to the death of a parent.

“This book meant a lot to him?”  seemed an appropriately empathic thing to continue the conversation with.

“Yeah.  He was really into history.  Anything having to do with World War II particularly.”

Was she thinking that the Berlin Air Lift was part of WWII?  Hmm… I quickly found out she may have had an interest in history, but not a very good sense of it.

“What was Kennedy’s famous quote from then?” another guy who was sitting over on her side of the bus broke in, “Ich bin ein Berliner?!”

“Yeah, and didn’t he also say, ‘Mr Gorbachex (sic), tear down this wall!”

“Uh… that was Reagan.” the other guy said.

“World War II fascinates me too,” she continued, as if that was to his point.

One of the three legs of the table of what I find most attractive in women had wobbled.  Smart, cute and quirky. Nix the first one.  I couldn’t make out how all the conversation on that side of the bus was  continuing over the din of the engine, but when I heard her next point, yeah… well…

“Hitler was so misunderstood by history!  He really did great things for his country.  He united Germany.  Fixed their economy and got them going again!” she insisted.

“He also killed six million Jews,” the other guy said.

“Yeah,” I chimed in, “that’s pretty bad.”  Not my most intellectual statement ever.

“Well…he was doing good for his country up until he started killing Jews!  You have to understand him from the perspective of his time!”

“I think killing six million people is horrible from the perspective of any time,” the guy said, shaking his head.

“Ten million,” I interjected, “He also killed about 4 million dissidents, Poles, Russians, Gypsies and homosexuals.”

She tried to make some other points like comparing Hitler to Stalin, but they were half hearted.  The position that that “Hitler was bad” is pretty easy to maintain, no matter how cute and quirky the female countering it may be.

Eventually, the other guy got off the bus, so I now I had this strange young lady’s full attention.  We continued our conversation, and it turned out she wasn’t some White supremacist or something equally nasty.  She expressed sympathy for the hundreds of thousands killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  She noted naively about this “thing” that happened over the summer where “they were thinking about building this mosque near where 9/11 happened.  Not at Ground Zero, but nearby, and like, so many people were against it!”

The ignorance of our society and its opposition to that community center still bugs me, so we quickly found a lot of common ground on that topic.

Now, when people are trapped on the bus, they will talk to pretty much anyone.  The real test of interest comes when you get off the bus, assuming it’s at the same stop.  She passed the test.

“So,” I asked, “where are you off to next?”

“Seattle.” she responded.  Hrrmph.  Darn.  Seattle is far away.  I didn’t ask if she was heading home, because, well, anyone riding the bus at 10 PM and isn’t heading home, probably doesn’t live the kind of lifestyle that would be compatible with someone in recovery.  Anyways, that was kind of the end of our encounter.  She thanked me for a really interesting conversation and I rode away to hover by the station and play my ukulele.  I had half an hour before my next bus came.

I sat and played and watched as she wandered around the Everett transit center, as if she didn’t know what bus to take to Seattle.  She looked a little lost.  I was sitting 50 feet away, playing my sweet ukulele.  I wanted to see if she would come to me.

Yeah, well, it didn’t happen.  I don’t want to date a Seattle girl who thinks Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy anyways, no matter how cute & quirky.

The Holidays can be a cold time of the year to be alone.  Fortunately, I have lots of practice.

And Internet porn.

How’d you do on the quiz?