elfs | Unexpected Sights

I had a brief interview with a recruiter this afternoon, and took the bus in. On the ride home, four young men got on the bus and sat in the rear section where I usually sit. Two were white, two black, all in their early 20s. They seemed an ordinary lot. Nothing distinguished any one of them. Of the white guys, one had a buzz cut, the other long hair, both in jeans and black windbreakers with different logos. The other two were similarly unremarkable, one in a long black woolen coat and the other in a scruffy, aging leather bomber jacket, colored brown a shade darker than the man himself.

They talked about sports and drinking. One of the white guys complained at length about losing his job at WaMu, holding his hand to his head with the L 'Luser' sign. I know how that feels.

I got off the bus at the park & ride. I drove there because the express buses leave straight from there and don't come as far down south as my house later in the mornings. As I did so, the guy with the bomber jacket gets off and walks toward the same parking lot. Our cars are separated by only three or four stalls. His is an aging, light grey beater of a Toyota and its front bumper had clearly seen better days.

As he positions himself at the lot exit I pulled up behind him. He has a bumper sticker I would never have pegged him for in a million years: