Memories of St. Louis (3 of 5): Politically incorrect Israelis.

My one (Dutch) friend’s (Sephardic) wife’s (Sephardic) sister was in her college class in Israel, and the (Ashkenazi) professor started swearing at her for no good reason and being all like, “You Moroccans are all the same.”

(And that family is from Libya.)

People complained to whoever the professor’s supervisor was, and so at the next class he personally apologized – to a different (dark-skinned) (Sephardic) student.

Memories of St. Louis (2b of 5): One boorish passenger on return bus trip.

This one short fresh-faced bro-ish 19 year old (Latino) guy from Texas at the table by my new seat was worried about making his bus connection and getting back to his big state school university on Monday because the bus was late – so he called up the fly-by-night bus company’s number and they told him he shouldn’t have booked his tickets so close (an hour apart!) and that anyway they couldn’t refund his ticket, that was the contract.

“So what am I supposed to do?”, he was like.  “If a bus left later, I would have booked that, but that’s the last bus of the night.”

Then, after the person on the phone gave him more run around and he had repeated that a few more times, he was like, “Okay, so you can’t help me, I really appreciate that, thank you, thank you very much,” all sarcastically and macho-ly, though he was only 19 and it would make anyone halfway normal want to smack him.

Luckily, the (black) (male) bus driver radioed ahead, and as we pulled up and I was walking off, the (Latino) kid talked to another (black) (male) bus driver who was putting the last bag in the under-the-bus storage, and the guy was like, “That’s you?  You just made it, we’re pulling off in a minute, no kidding.”

Memories of St. Louis (2a of 5): Two nasty passengers on return bus trip.

1) A (fat) (early 40s) (mildly bearded) (white) hipster guy who during the rest stop just sat down on his seat in the stopped quiet bus and let out a belch, as the bus was filling slowly back up with passengers.

2) A (fat) (early college) (nerd-ish) (dark bearded) (white) guy who sat down next to me and smelled vaguely like ass – and totally smelled like ass when he shifted so I could go past him and go to the bathroom...  When I temporarily moved to another seat to use plugs there and charge my cell phone, he was like, “Sweet!, Are you getting up?”, and shifted himself onto my seat without even getting up, smearing his ass all over everything...  After that, I permanently moved.

Memories of St. Louis (1 of 5): Return Bus Almost-Accident.

So the other weekend I went to St. Louis to visit my one (Dutch) friend, who had taken a yearlong leave to go to Israel with his (Israeli) wife and son to try living there and figure things out since his wife didn't like St. Louis, and who ultimately decided to leave his tenure-track job, but was stuck into coming back for 8 weeks to teach 2 classes.

On the bus ride home, I was just starting to read the Odyssey, when the bus driver slammed on the brakes, and I looked up to this car acting funny, veering in the lane right ahead to the left.

“Sweet Jesus, sweet blood of Jesus, sweet blood of Jesus!”, an (older) (poorer-looking) (black) woman on the other side of the aisles a few rows up cried out as soon as it all started to happen but before anyone else knew what was going on.

Dream of the airport.

The other week I dreamt that I had flown into the airport on the northwest side of the city, and was waiting for a flight to the airport on the southwest side of the city, before I ultimately decided to just go use the subway.

Dream of the Library.

The other week I dreamt of the main library on campus.

I was descending the central staircase into the lobby, and lights were dimmed throughout, and circulation was at an oval shaped modern desk in the middle, and the one (African-American) (female) supervisor was sitting there, and the clock was at like 4:13pm, and I knew that the library was closing early at 5pm that day and that circ closed at 4:15pm, but when I went to check out my books that I really needed for my dissertation before the long weekend started, she said she couldn’t, since circ closed at 4:15pm, and no matter how much I asked, she wouldn’t do it.

The worst was that she looked impatient for vacation to start and I knew that she had to be there through 5pm, but it made no sense at all that she’d refuse to check out books to me, since it wasn’t like she was doing anything.

Part of me wondered, then, if she had already shut down the computer system a few minutes early, and just didn’t feel like starting it up again.