This and That

Two incidents that struck me as humorous in the last week.

1) I was on the the bus heading downtown, when a man boarded the bus and down behind me. He was engaged in a loud conversation on his cellphone. During the somewhat animated discussion, a cell phone rings. He says goodbye to the first person and pulls a second phone out of his shirt pocket, and begins an equally loud conversation with the second caller. Since I was on the bus at rush hour, traffic was moving especially slowly. Eventually, the driver begins yelling at the man to get off the phone because the entire bus has no interest in his business. Undaunted, the loud talker continued. The driver continued to make remarks, to the effect of, "How important does he think he is that he need to be on the phone for a half hour?!" Other passengers also became restless. The woman sitting next to me also tells him that the whole bus doesnt want to hear his conversation. The response: nobody wants to hear you either. I did all I could to hold in laughter, while being somewhat excited that I understood their conversation.

2) I left the Pardes building for lunch on Wednesday. While walking down the street toward the mall, a security employee told me to stop walking. Since he had a gun, I listened. Turns out, there was a suspicious package at the bus stop between Pardes and the grocery store a half block down the street. Because of the reality of life, any unidentified packages are considered suspicious. Security employees from the mall began moving people away from the area. However, one such employee, who was unarmed (not that it would have made a difference), walks up to the shopping bag and turns it upside down. Out falls some sweaters and a couple blankets. So here I am, being told not to get any closer, lest there is something sinister about this bag, and then a man, dressed more or less as I was, walks up and "defuses" the situation. Funny, no?

Shabbat shalom.