Trip Tales

During a recent visit to my hometown (the capital of Iowa) I pulled into a parking lot to check my phone and laptop. While I was bent over into the passenger doorway looking at the laptop a city bus stopped and two passengers stepped out, around 50 feet from me. I began to notice a few moments later someone hollering, “Hey, O.G.! Hey, O.G.! Hey, O.G.!” This was repeated multiple times, with a short pause in between.

I finished with the laptop, shut the passenger door to my van and rounded the vehicle to get in. It was then I saw that the incessant yelling was coming from one of the former bus riders, and he was staring right at me, continuing with the same phrase. I stopped and stared back. He then asked, “You got a cigarette?” At that moment I realized all of that noise, for maybe two minutes straight, had been directed entirely at me. A lady standing beside him was gazing into her phone. I said, “No, I don’t smoke.” He said, “Good for you.” Then the couple half turned and began slowly walking away along the sidewalk, speaking quietly among themselves, as if I had never been there.

What’s the point of this little story? There isn’t one, really. I just wonder what would possess a man to stand in one spot for that long, hollering the same phrase repeatedly at a complete stranger? We were not at a sporting event together, or a concert, or a protest. He just stepped off of the bus and presented his rudeness to the first chump he saw.