I went to Portland last weekend to go to my lovely friend Kat's birthday party accompanied by Mac and the crew of fun people that always surround her. The day was filled, and I do mean filled, with eccentric people that cause one to pause and say, "I. Love. People."
First before I had even hit the road I stopped in at the grocery store a block from my house to grab a couple of things. Same grocery store that I met who we will affectionately call Stalker Lionel [more to come]. So on my way into the store I am met by two people, both men. Both on bikes. They are riding away from one another but carrying on a heated conversation with no sign of stopping. Thus they have to get louder and louder with each peddle, proving increasingly difficult. This is not taken into consideration so they continue for what seams to be an infinite amount of time. And this should not be a surprise because their speech was filled with pertenant philosophical discussion.
Man one: "Whatever. Why would I listen to you, you are on a girl bike."
Man two: "This is not a girl bike."
One: "Sure looks like a girl bike."
Two: Exasperated, "THIS is a classic Schwinn."
One: "Its a girl's bike."
And I could keep going, because after all, they did.
I was not quite to the Donald/Aurora exit when I hit a major traffic jam. As it turns out there had been a horrific accident involving some odd (many) motorcyclists and one car. Egh. Thankfully my dad just bought a motorcycle. I-5 closed entirely. So there I sat with thousands of other drivers and passangers. Now I would assume, most like me were just the average individual in some Sudan or SUV used to drive through traffic jams (yay global warming). But not next to me. No. Because I am surrounded almost constantly with entertaining and wonderfully zany individuals.
Pan to my left...a clown. Yep from the yellow fro' to the perched, broad, bright red-white outlined lips, to the thick ruffled collar with billowing polka dotted sleeves. And its not just that she was a clown, it was her exit strategy. So of course she was driving a clown car...or what could have been. Possibly just trying to make up for all of the soccer mom SUV's. Or maybe it was a company car. Not an earth car, but picture something remarkably similar and remarkably small. She just spun her little clown self right around and braved the grassy ditch median. (Those in SUV's might I add were not so brave.) But after all she is a clown...she may have grown up high diving into small bodies of water.
Pan to my right...mostly because I was trying to figure out what stunk. As it were it was hot, to hot to have my windows up in my broken air conditioned car. To my right, hundreds of chickens. Angry chickens, surely hot chickens, shoved into tiny cage on top of tiny cage, beside tiny cage. There they sat in the smoldering heat angry and pecking and ininvertantly (sp?) spewing grungy bits of hay from their "homes." And they may have been local grass fed beuties, but they were not fresh. Needless to say I got to Mac's smelling of sweat and poultry.
All of this to say. I love people. I just love how people are so different. Some people are passionate loyal Schwinn activists, some are clowns, some drive truck..trucks full of pecking chickens. But whoever we are we are maintained under the same laws of traffic jams, human decency (parking lot fights and such), hot weather and more. And I am SO glad that we are so different. I love people.
