Don't Make Me a Target

The #19 bus journey serves up the same sights and sounds every day. There's a rustle of bad commuter papers that make up for their total lack of news merit with brevity. Commuters send cold glares at each other or quickly avert their eyes from elderly people looking for reassuring conversations, or pipeheads looking for someone to bark at for awhile. Shoulder to shoulder we bounce off each other as the bad transmission of the cheap eco friendly electric bus lurches through every intersection switch. There’s a tinny symphony of cranked MP3s in the air this morning; dull thudding bass and overwrought shrieks from miscellaneous pop divas.

I’m disgorged into the street, into the cold snap of too-early-in-the-morning air. It’s lightly scented with financial district musk: expensive cologne, perfume, Italian coffee, baked goods, diesel exhaust, and the greasy funk of bike courier body odour. One Quebecois courier waits at an intersection pounding on the hood of a car that’s nearly killed her, cursing its terrified carpoolers in thickly accented English. She flips them off, winks at me and takes off a fraction of a second after the light changes.

Two terrifying things await me at my desk. One, an advisory that something called “Scary Bingo” is going to begin circulating to assist in ramming this month’s enforced fun agenda down our throats. I’m afraid to ask what Scary Bingo is. Certainly the dauber stained people standing outside Planet Bingo in my neighborhood are certainly scary enough some days, but I don’t think this is what’s meant.

Scary thing number two is a Happy Halloween card that’s been sent to us by one of our low function sex offenders who’s taken to incessantly calling us. He is the world’s worst mascot. It looks like it was drawn by an eager to please six year-old. It has the same obvious determination to stay inside the lines hidden in the black and orange strokes of pencil crayon. One dimensional black bat on the front says “boo”. A bedsheet ghost next to it smiles happily.

Good morning downtown.