Sunday Night/Early Monday Morning Whatever You Want to Call it.

Monday, October 6, 2008 – 12:57 a.m.

I am sitting on a bus at the Windsor, Ontario Greyhound tunnel. I just crossed the Detroit/Windsor border and it was the easiest border crossing of my life. Normally when I cross on the bus at the Vermont/Quebec border they make everyone get off the bus with their luggage, including the luggage stowed under the bus. They scan each person’s passport one by one, interrogate them as to where they are going, where they have come from, what they have in their bags ect. If anyone falters or hesitates or has a non-American/Canadian passport, they send them to another room and EVERYONE on the bus has to sit and wait while they are further questioned. This is what I am used to. Just now, they had everyone get off the bus but we could leave our stuff. The border patrol agent looked at my passport and said “Where do you live?” I said “Montreal” and he said “Okay.” This was the procedure for everyone. There were 12-15 people and we all got through in under two minutes. In Quebec this would’ve taken 30+ minutes. Also in Quebec, the border police board the bus and search/inspect it before we are allowed to get on. Not the case here. We could all immediately get on the bus and go on our way. It was awesome.

Now sitting on this bus means I am just beginning leg two of three of my 21 hour trek back to Montreal. I got on a bus in Chicago at 4:15 central time (5:15 ours) and arrived in Detroit at about 11:15 p.m. our time. At first on that ride I had the back three rows to myself and I took a two hours “nap”, which was actually more of me just listening to all 67 Ergs songs with my eyes closed. We stopped in Kalamazoo, Michegan halfway and for some reason two people decided to sit with me. So I went from having a three seater to myself to be the only person on the bus squished because everyone one else was still sitting singly. I sat by the window and the guy who sat next to me was pretty cool. He was a psych student at U of Michegan and we spent the three hour trip to his stop in Ann Arbor discussing psychology, politics, and the mind-blowing apathy of our generation.

When I got to the Detroit station I had an hour to wait until my bus to Toronto (my bus was 25 minutes late so I actually had to wait longer). I sat in the waiting area watching CNN which was showing an OH-SO-COMFORTING breaking news story about a Greyhound bus that flipped end over end in California a few hours ago killing five and injuring dozens. I sat next to a kid who turned out to be only twenty. I found out that he had a two year old son, was from South Carolina and currently spent his time travelling from city to city via Greyhound selling magazine subscriptions door to door. The conversation started to go dramatically down hill when he asked me if I had a boyfriend. This is ALWAYS the case. Whenever a guy I have been talking to for a while brings this up without having any conversational cues either way, the reaction to my answer is always one of two things.

1.) Finds an excuse to leave the conversation, because apparently I am not interesting without at least the small hope of getting some with a strange girl in a greyhound terminal.

-or-

2.) Tries to convince me why I should “experience” new things, i.e. hook up with him right now.

It’s really a lovely game. Usually whenever I am talking to anyone who is both male and in our age bracket I tend to casually slip in the fact that I have a boyfriend. For example I might say “Yeah well, I’m used to greyhound because I take it a lot to see my boyfriend.” I then watch to see that little flinch or hesitations. If it doesn’t come then I know this person is really just interested in talking to me and I continue. If he does flinch, USUALLY the casual way in which I brought this up throws even bold ones off guard and they make their “smooth” exit. This exact scenario had happened earlier today when on the first part of my ride the 23 year old Detroit Police Academy guy suddenly said “I need to get some sleep” and abruptly stopped talking to me when I said “Yeah my boyfriend bought me this DS for our anniversary.” Unfortunately this time, it was late and I wasn’t on guard so I hadn’t bothered to do this…

And he decided to try to nonchalantly convince me to take a break and try new things with him by bragging about all the girls he had made "love him" last weekend.

I really don’t understand who this tactic works on. Are there really girls out there that just say “Wow!” and then proceed to flirt their way into a strangers pants? Does he really expect me to be like “You know you’re right 2 ½ years is too long. I’m just going to end this now and go off with you.” Seriously, I just don’t get it.

Plus, for half an hour we had been talking about where we grew up and what we were doing know, schools, jobs, ect. I talked about Dairy Queen and he pointed out a baby without a hat on and used it to mention his own two year old son. There had been no point in the conversation in which I gave him any indication that I wasn’t the type of girl who might claim sexual harassment based on comments like that. Saying shit like that to a total stranger is a huge risk. Not to mention a little bit ridiculous. Okay...a lot ridiculous.

The moral of this story…always mention you have a boyfriend before strange guys feel that they have invested this much time…they might as well take a shot in the dark.

I have way more to say about my trip to see Katelyn and some life revelations I had along the way, but it’s 1:24 and my eyes hurt so I’m going to close them and listen to more Ergs. I have to study up you know! Plus I want to save my laptop battery for when I am beating my head against the wall out of boredom tomorrow morning.

Goodnight!