(Equa) Librium

Friday afternoon. Bus stop.

A friendly girl sat down next to me asking about the bus. She had her bus schedule pulled out. At this point, my bus was already 5 minutes late.

Enter toothless crazy person.

"Don't mind me, I've just been riding the bus around all day. I'm trying to get a crazy check, but they gave me Librium and I was high for 4 days. That stuff is crazy and I did Crystal Meth for half my life too."

Librium. What is that. Did he mean Lithium? Enter Google.

Librium: used to relieve anxiety and to control agitation caused by alcohol withdrawal.

Great, so pills for alcohol withdraw as opposed to pills for being manic depressive. Slightly better I suppose.

"I used to make iPhones and stuff, but then they could send my job oversees and pay them $.03 an hour instead of $100 an hour like they were paying me. I make over $100 a day now, but I won't tell you how. hea hea hea. And it's only partly illegal."

I figured I should throw out some indulgent awkward laughter. Nice girl next to me stuffed her nose further into her bus schedule, so she wasn't going to be helping me acknowledge this guy who was probably going to continue talking whether someone responded or not.

"I do my growing out in California. Best damn shit there is. Right now my son is growing for me......tomatoes that is. hea hea hea. Here in Arizona, they'll get you for everything. I was just in jail for 4 days after getting 5 jaywalking tickets in the last 3 months. I have 13 warrants out right now. It's those damn bicycle cops with their fancy computers on the back. You know it's time to get out of Tucson when the cops know your name. 'Hey George, wanna go grab a beer??' hea hea hea."

At this point, the bus was 15 minutes late and a different bus pulled up. I noticed the nice girl was getting on and I really really didn't want to be left alone with this guy. After a brief conversation in my head, I jumped on this bus, the wrong bus.

"God bless. God bless. God bless." He called after us.

I got off a few stops later and hoped he wasn't actually waiting for the same bus I was and would see him when my bus finally arrived. Luckily my gamble paid off and he wasn't on the bus.

Minutes later, the later bus leapfrogged us. We were 20 minutes late so the bus driver got a call from home base. "This bus is turning Express, we aren't picking anyone else up until we make up these 20 minutes."

We all looked at each other very nervously because she grabbed the steering wheel, focused, and barreled through a red light at Speedway, almost hitting a pedestrian and narrowly missing the bus pulled over after the intersection.

The guy across from me asks "Have you ever seen the movie Speed?"

I starting busting up laughing. Much more than necessary, but it seemed pretty hysterical at that moment. Especially since every bus stop we passed, she shook her head with some ferocity and made hand gestures to stay away from the bus to all of the people hoping to board.

Between the crazy drugged up dude and crazy race car bus driver lady, I was glad to get home.

Oh Tucson.