Bus Story: Sleeping Potential

Extra dark this morning. I even checked my watch to make sure I wasn’t an hour off as I waited for the bus. Escaping the chilled air with a spitty sort of rain, I find a seat in the almost empty bus. We fill up as, stop after stop, my fellow travelers join the ride headlong into Monday. I notice a gentleman coming down the aisle. He’s tall, perhaps 6′ 2″ and very slender. He’s wearing a touring cap, also called a flat cap, I think. And under his cap, his face is a combination of early Buster Keaton and an archetype Dickensian clerk, complete with high arching eyebrows and bright, bird-like eyes. I start imagining that he’s in a very expected sort of job – something with numbers, statistics, and a place to hang his cap. Then, as I think of his daily life, I wonder what lies beneath…what cunning darkness, or extraordinary light, rests beneath his seemingly innocuous exterior? Does it emerge during the day? Does he even know it’s there? Perhaps he’s a champion cage fighter and this is his dream-self taking a ride on the ole 54. How many others are sleeping and just need the right, or wrong, ignition moment? Phew. Philosophy before coffee is exhausting.

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