Random Encounters, Part Three

Pike Place--an iconic scene when thinking of Seattle. Really? I've decided that Pike Place is the drug center of the city. I catch my bus home at Third & Pike every evening, along with countless others, and it is by far my least favorite stop in terms of peace, yet my favorite in terms of people watching.

Anyways, I call it the drug center because I've witnessed several strange scenarios on different occasions. Some are more somber. One evening, a very thin woman stood slanted on the corner. Her face was focused on something no one else could see. She had a needle in her hand.

Others are a lighter. Another evening on that same corner, a man stood with a cardboard sign, asking for marijuana. "I really love weed!!" he yelled as I walked by.

On Friday evening, I stood waiting at the stop, and a man with a beard and a brown paper bag stood to my far left under the cover of the building's overhang. I bounced a little in the cold and to the beat of the song I was listening to. I saw him notice me, and a minute later, he moved closer, over to my right. I continued to bounce and started humming "Painting by Chagall" by the Weepies. Soon, I heard someone talking, as if to me. I shook my head out of dreamworld and looked around. The man with the beard and the bag was speaking to me. He was leaning in close and pointing at me.

"Wm ou sm mrm fr s?" I heard. What?

"Would you like some nice mushrooms for Christmas?" he repeated, pointing to the bag.

"No, thank you," I couldn't help but let out a little laugh and went back to my song. I turned again, and the man was gone.

I'm not entirely sure about the legal status of magic mushrooms, but I found it quite interesting that out of the crowd of people at the stop, he chose me to ask. I wonder what people are thinking in such instances.



How bizarre, also, that in such a big city, I see the same people day after day. There is a woman who sits in a wheelchair at the bus stop and keeps a bag of goods underneath, which she peddles to a crowd familiar to her.

"I've got a nice jacket for you today," she said to a regular customer.

There is another man, who, when he asked me for money the second day in a row and with a different story, has since recognized me and stopped asking. The first day he wheeled up to me, it was, "Miss, I'm just...I'm in tears because I can't find my mom *points up the street* and I just got out of the hospital because I got hit by a bus, and I found a traveler's hostel up the street for $30; can you give me $30? One man only gave me a dollar." I didn't have any money and didn't quite trust his story anyways, so I said sorry and kept walking. The next day, it was, "Miss, I'm homeless and need money."

"You talked to me yesterday." I said. He nodded and committed my face to memory because when I passed on Friday, he nodded and said nothing.

He continued on to a man who was standing where the man with the mushrooms had once stood to my left. The man was fairly old and looked generally unhappy, his entire face sagging into one large frown. His shoulders stooped over, and he crossed his arms. The man begging had a young boy with him, holding an umbrella for him. As the man asked the angry fellow for money, the young boy slipped with the umbrella, and it came close to the angry man's face.

"What the fuck are you doing? Trying to stab my fucking eye out!"

"I'm sorry," the boy sheepishly replied and started to walk away.

"You don't talk to him like that, motherfucker," the begging man said to the angry one.

"What's that, motherfucker? Who the fuck do you think you are?" the angry man began towards the man in the wheelchair, who was starting to look upset in the way that he did the first night I saw him.

"He's my brother, now back the fuck off motherfucker!"

The angry man continued to get closer to the two, pointing and yelling, when a woman stepped between them.

"He's just a young boy. You don't talk to him like that," she told the angry man. "Now you keep going. Get on. Go," she turned to the young boy and the begging man.

It all happened very quickly, and the reason that it is any of my business is, for once, not because I was nosy, but because my bus was sitting at the curb, and the man in the wheelchair was in front of me, and the angry man was to my left, and a shop wall was to my right. There was no getting by the arguing men, and I sure wasn't going to be the one to step in-between them. The city is as safe as you are careful. I'd rather wait twenty minutes for the next bus than get mixed up something like that. Luckily, the woman, who seemed to know the angry man, resolved it quickly, and I took a few quick leaps up to my bus.