Beach Town Bus Driver

This morning when I got home from working the 10:00pm to 6:00am shift I thought, "I have nothing for the blog." It was a very busy night and it went by very quickly, but it seemed that I had come away with no really good stories. For those who might be curious, there was no Phillip sighting last night. Perhaps he has learned that the bus is not a peaceful place to hang out on a Saturday night. Rosie Perez? Yes, she got on the bus with her brother and a bunch of friends. "Hey, how you doin' Bill? Tomorrow's my birthday, man. I'm going to be 19." "Hey, that's great. Congratulations!" Funny how all of her friends appear to be much younger. I still say she's 16.

I got to talk to two very nice girls from Finland. Katri said she is working at Pepper's, a place on the boardwalk that serves Mexican food. I told her I would come and see her sometime.

As my shift was ending and the sun was coming up, I was sitting on my bus at the south end of the route. In a few minutes I would go out of service and return to the bus terminal. A drunk, oh sorry, an obviously intoxicated gentleman staggered up to my bus. I said, "Sorry buddy this bus isn't going anywhere." Apparently he didn't care for my tone of voice and he lit into me about how I don't like my job. "You don't like your job, do you?" "Actually, I like it very much." "No you don't! If you don't like your job, maybe you shouldn't be doing this job." He walked away, turning back to tell me that Jesus loves me. Thanks buddy, He loves you too.

My shift ended and I went home to get some sleep. When I arrived at home my son was just getting ready to go out to work his job at a restaurant. "See you this afternoon. Wake me up when you get home and maybe we'll go out for some tacos."

In the afternoon we headed down to the boardwalk and had dinner at Pepper's where Katri was our waitress. It was quite a pleasant night, so after dinner my son and I walked to the south end of the boardwalk. Along the way we passed all kinds of little shops and restaurants and arcades. Toward the south end there are a variety of carnival games like pop the balloons with a dart, ring toss, and water gun races. Well, guess who was working the knock over the bottles with a ball game. That's right, my intoxicated buddy from this morning, looking a little weary and sporting a red and white striped carnival blazer. I looked him right in the eye and he looked back at me as if he had some hazy recollection of having seen me somewhere before. It was all I could do to keep from saying, "Ah ha! How do you like your job?" But, I was afraid he might jump over that booth and come out swinging at me. So, I just kept my mouth shut and kept on walking, thinking to myself, "Buddy, you just made the blog!"