Registered: Oct 2001
Location:
Posts: 18155

So I'm comin home on the bus for lunch and a guy is waiting to get on in a wheelchair. A black guy sitting in the handicapped spot on one side of the bus gets up and moves to the other side and sits in the fold-down seat perpendicular to the other handicapped spot, having vacated one side of the bus for the guy in the wheelchair before that guy even got on.

A girl got on just before the guy in teh wheelchair and sat down in the vacated seat with her headphones on. The guy in the wheelchair gets off the lift and smarts off to the black guy saying, "Ya wanna move outta the handicapped spot?" in a tone that was a bit of a scold.

The black guy got up and said, "I moved outta that one for ya!" pointing to the seat where the girl was. She remained purposely oblivious.

Granted the guy was sitting in a handicapped spot still, and you're supposed to surrender them when asked. But I was gettin mad at the guy in the wheelchair all through this. It seems different now that I write about it. I should've been mad at the bus driver for not looking back over his shoulder and asking one or the other of the two people to move. In any case, the guy in the wheelchair starts calling the black guy names and telling him he's stupid and can't he read. And then he says the one thing that REALLY got to me:

"WHy don't you just go back where you came from? Get a job, dammit!"

I mean, wtf? I saw no reason to think the black guy wasn't a Minneapolis native just like the guy in the chair, assuming he was. Anyway, the black guy was yelling back at him as he exited the bus saying essentially that this is why the world had him in that chair, because he was an angry man or something to that effect, which I thought was actually a pretty good response, and in some mysterious way even possibly true. However, neither of them was really talking to the other, and they neither of them said anything directly in response to the other.

And I have spent the last thirty minutes re-hashing their argument and giving them both a good talking-to. And I wanna kick that whitebread bitch with the headphones in her shins. I wanna kick her in the shins, that is. She didn't have headphones in her shins.

And now after posting this, I feel just a tad bit neurotic for even givin a shit about these three losers on the bus. But everyone looked at me for some reason, sitting three rows back, and we all shrugged at one another in agreement that the guy in the wheelchair was an asshole.

So we all got to count moral coup on the jerk and the girl, and I bonded with my brethren of color.

Speak truth to power, bitches.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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Conversely, I was crossing the street in downtown and was accosted by a guy asking me for fifty cents. I said, "Nah, can't help ya," but the guy walking a few steps behind me replied to him loudly with, "Pull up yer pants'n get a job, you LOSER!"

The guy panhandling said, "Suck my dick, cracka!"

I laughed my ass off on that one and didn't feel bad for either of them and thought that was the kind of banter and repartee that belongs on a city street and harmonized with the horns and gulls and machinery.

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Registered: Nov 2000
Location: Burleson, Texas
Posts: 520

I'm apalled.......!!!!

Last edited by IBeFree on 12-07-2004 at 02:02 AM

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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Oceanside, CA
Posts: 5156

Sounds like Mr. Wheelchairbound had it in for the black man from the beginning, and you're right, Headphone Lady should have moved. In fact, given that she probably knew she was getting on right before Mr. Wheelchairbound (it was at the same stop?), for her to take the open handicapped spot is darn near inexcusable.
Sounds like the black man was moving anyway, so Mr. Chair didn't have much call to berate him--except that he probably had it in for him from the start.
"Go back where you came from, and get a job." Man, what a character.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Beatrice, Nebraska
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What happen?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

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The pinnacle of Failbot technology.

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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Oceanside, CA
Posts: 5156

As to the panhandler/accoster, was the guy asking for money rude or intrusive? If not, I think insulting him is out of line. Your response was polite, and I hope it was received with good grace.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: south afrika
Posts: 16815

ahhh the world would be so much better if we just rounded all the niggers in death camps and got rid of them

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Registered: May 2002
Location:
Posts: 8833

"A fag, a nigger, and a cripple get on a bus..."

Man, that joke had such potential.

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: is futile
Posts: 5027

I am pleased your emotional reaction was as you describe Mugtoe.
Moral fiber is the backbone of society.

Cheers
-m

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: 0.50
Posts: 9355

i'm not sure if i have mentioned this, i know i did elsewhere because it amused and struck me, but i was reminded because there are few black fellows in this area of the country:
i was walking to work, through downtown and over the granville street bride because i didn't have money for the bus, with headphones on and oblivious of course to the world in general (headphones notwithstanding) when a young black man (nice thug clothes, hat turned precisely) seemed to think i had given him the whiteye. he said something that i didn't hear because i had headphones on, and didn't think to pay attention to because i didn't really notice him, so i stopped and removed music and said "i'm sorry, i had headphones on. you were saying?" and he proceeded to ramble. i don't remember the initial statements, but they were apparently accusatory and referred to race in a roundabout way. i was kind of struck by how uncomfortable he must have been in this city to be acting that way. i looked at him sort of blankly, being careful with my eye contact as i didn't want to appear impudent in the face of an aggrieved minority but also didn't want to fill the position of guilty white man he was assigning me, until he sort of laid a hand on my chest and said "i dare y'all motherfuckers to test me!" which was of course kind of ridiculous and summed up our discussion thus far. i was kind of in a spot here, as he was waiting for me to do something and also i had to go to work, so i said "there's no test" and i continued to walk.
i obviously don't mean to present a sort of alternate example to illustrate the plight of the white man, i just thought it was interesting to be picked out as The Man and accused of persecuting the negro (not in those words, of course) since i'm scruffy and harmless and stricken sometimes by poverty. i felt sorry for him though, as i said, because of whatever feeling it was that drove him to such things. seems terribly out of place to be an angry black man in vancouver, since there are so few black people they aren't really accorded any negative stereotype that i have encountered. it makes sense to be an angry native, though. for one. i can't think of any other institutionally-victimized people around here, but you never know. old chinese men, maybe.
on behalf of dead white men that i didn't know: i'm sorry about the railroad, china. and the head-tax.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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you go with yer reparations. [p]

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Registered: Oct 2001
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I'm not sure why I posted all that, except that it struck me how there were forty different ways of looking at the episode, and everybody was wrong in some way just because they didn't see everything that happened and didn't hear what the other people were really saying, or didn't listen.

Life is such a muddle most times.

mass transit is great for making me stop being so insular. It's hard to stay wrapped in my own mind and ignore my fellow human beings when they're a schizophrenic sitting next to me on teh bus talkin to Jesus and smelling a little like piss.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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that's not really acccurate. I rarely smell piss on the bus, actually.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: 0.50
Posts: 9355

i've thought about that a lot also, transit being the only place that you are really forced to spend time so close to strangers. i like it most of the time. especially when i'm drunk.
other times i am indifferent, unless i am on a bus (as opposed to a train, or the seabus here) because if i am on a bus i am usually going to some bullshit location that i would rather avoid.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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There are a tremendous number of blind people in Minneapolis, as we have some sort of resources available here, I think, that aren't so easily accessible elsewhere. But lord, why you'd wanna learn to walk the streets in a place where there's ice underfoot six months outta the year is beyond me. But it's cool to ride with so many of them that I no longer give them much thought at all. Same goes for folks who use wheelchairs.

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Registered: Apr 2001
Location: 0.50
Posts: 9355

it rarely snows around here lately (for the past few years anyway), so if there weren't holes in my shoes that make my feet wet if it is raining i wouldn't really think about walking. i would just do it.
as it is, i think about how wet my feet are going to be and then after time has passed i think about how wet my feet ARE. i like walking, and not much is more than an hour away from anywhere, though i still take the bus when i am really tired or hungover or constrained by time or something.

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

quote:

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Originally posted by Talarohk
Sounds like Mr. Wheelchairbound had it in for the black man from the beginning, and you're right, Headphone Lady should have moved. In fact, given that she probably knew she was getting on right before Mr. Wheelchairbound (it was at the same stop?), for her to take the open handicapped spot is darn near inexcusable.

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Registered: Feb 2003
Location: Oceanside, CA
Posts: 5156

It is possible that he was going with that, true. While it's old-fashioned, I could respect and understand that. However, what he said later to the black man was anything but respectable.
I can understand the annoyance of the black man, given that he did the right thing, and was then asked to move again because the woman with headphones did not.

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Registered: Oct 2001
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Chairman was muttering to himself after black-man exited the bus. He said, "Minnesota's finally wisin up!" among other things. He made reference to panhandling and general idleness and worthlessness that he ascribed to this other guy's character. He was a real sourpuss.

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Registered: Jan 2001
Location: library
Posts: 19584

I love you Frank.

-m

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Registered: Oct 2001
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yeah, but I live for Danger

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Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:

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Originally posted by Hawley Griffin
ahhh the world would be so much better if we just rounded all the niggers in death camps and got rid of them

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Sedona, Arizona
Posts: 19119

I would have said something. I can't help but offer commentary in situations like that. I'm not saying I would be all breaking bad and kicking ass, just tossing out my opinion.
Now if Phil had been the