Postcards From The Irreverent

It's a stormy night here, and the week is just about wrapped up. Rainy nights usually don't affect me in any certain way, but tonight I keep thinking back to earlier this week, during one of my walks back from class.

I was passing by Burruss, where a great number of BT buses stop during the week. I could hear the laughter well before I could see its owner, the deep cackles reverberating down the sidewalk.

As people with unwavering faces filed past me in the other direction, I saw an old man standing by a bus' entrance. Dressed in a powder blue vest with a matching hat, his face turned towards me, laughter pouring from his expressionless face. Laughter without any real humor or mirth behind it but still flowing unstoppably from him, as if he had forgotten the joke but still wanted to let it be known that he had one to tell.

As I stepped closer, I noticed the bus driver perched equally expressionless in his seat, his glance set firmly somewhere down the Drillfield's curves. He didn't even flinch as the man hurled gibberish at him between his undying, unfeeling laughter.

I glanced around. No one else wanted to notice this happening right in front of them. Powder Blue Old Man was as good as invisible, his laughter seeping into the cement and grass, his unintelligible words as effective as the birds that might have been singing nearby.

But I noticed. For an instant, just as I passed him, I wanted to know why he was there and where he had come from. I wondered about his life and what trauma might have caused him to throw reason to the wind. But just as I thought all this, my incessant feet carried me down the sidewalk, past the bus and back into my own life.

The man's chuckles continued to echo across the Drillfield as I glanced at my watch, wondering how much time I had for lunch.