Monday night, while I rode my typical bus home, I noticed something odd.
The back wheel, closest to the curb, felt really loose. I'd even go as far to say that I was hoping and praying that it didn't spring free and roll down Michigan Avenue ahead of us. I kept waiting for a flat tire, and the bus driver's slow stop and deep sigh, announcing that she had to unload us all onto the ice-coated curb.
But, that didn't happen.
It just wiggled and bounced and jiggled and eeked all the way down Michigan. It reminded me of a story my Mom tells about growing up in St. Louis.
She and 3 of her sisters (there are 7 total O'Brien girls, by the way) were crammed into a convertible with the top down, rolling down the highway on a nice summer day, and they noticed that the car next to them was bouncing along all strange. The back tire on the right side seemed to be going flat, or loose, or something. Just not good.
So, being the good Catholic girls that they were (and still are, mind you), the O'Brien girls felt it was their civic duty to share this information with the driver of the dangerous car near them. My aunt Sharon SWEARS it was her that leaned over to make the announcement, but my Mom is convinced she wasn't even in the car. But, we let her tell it as if she were because she's so great.
Anyway, for conversation purposes, I'll move on. Sharon leaned over, and yelled to the driver, "your right rear wheel is real wobbly!" As you can imagine, the alliteration in that sentence caused the whole thing to come out more like, "your right reer reel is reel robbly." You try it. Say it aloud with me. See?
We all still crack up when this story is told at O'Brien family functions, and it sure made me giggle on the bus on Monday night. I really wanted to shout it out...
"Hey Bus Driver, your right reer reel is reel robbly!"
Yeah. Then I would have been the crazy lady featured in someone else's blog the following day.
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2 comments:
I swear, most days I'd like to sponsor a rest home for broken, wheezy, smelly, just-plain-old decrepit CTA buses. Some of those poor things are on their last legs.
Or, rather, wheels.
Either way, seems to me retirement would be a wise option, before there is some God-awful massacre of epic proportions on Lakeshore Drive.
:)
see? you know it too. people do crazy shit on buses and trains knowing full well someone is going to blog about them. i'm seriously just waiting for the day someone does something crazy, then announces their name and the correct spelling so that they can google themself and find their immortality later.
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