Friday reading: the ongoing saga of the Oakville Smokers Club

from: MM
to: cj@thiscrazytrain.com
date: Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 8:16 PM
subject: Oakville smoker update

Been off GO for a while - since the good weather started I've been mostly biking to work (8 to 12 klicks, depending on the route) or catching a lift in the morning with the wife and then rolling home on the bike, but the weather these last few days has forced me back onto the buses.

Today, as I was exiting the GO bus I spotted an old photo subject. The last time I saw him, about two months or so ago, he was dressed in some matching dayglo puffy basketball-uniform-hiphop-circus-is-in-town getup. I took some pics from the bus island of him sucking a sick-stick. He saw me and actually came out to the bus island to try to give me a hard time. I mostly just kept taking his pic as he continued to posture and swear and threaten me. Nothing much came of it. Wish I could find the pics. He was a sight.

So today I whip out th ecanon and take his pic again. He recognizes me (no flies on our boy! - apparently the oxygen deprivation/carbon monoxide poisoning has yet to have full effect). He starts in on the threats again, so I go right up to the side door of the station, open it, and ask him to speak up so the CSR's at the ticket booth can hear him. He stays outside.

So I go back out, and buddy has buttonholed a bus driver of my acquainatnce and is asking him to stop me from taking his pic.

Its for these moments I live.

Bus driver buddy points out that the sign says no smoking, and that I have a perfect right to take photos in a public place.

I took full advantage of the moment to hoot loudly as I walked away. So I'm a bad person.

So smoking buddy starts following me. Meh. So I've got a new friend.

Then, just around the corner I spot two more smokers. These two suave and debonaire men about town are ensconced on the bench right by the main doors and right under the apparently hard to decipher no-smoking pictogram. They can't read - blame the teachers, natch.

I am that kind of O-C type who can't stop when I've started. Hey - what's two more baggy-pants skank hounds after you, more or less?

These two misspelled tatts, relaxed-waistband and lowered crotch types do indeed take offence to the picture taking. So seemingly sensitive, except when it comes to other peoples' needs, the social niceties, and their own aroma of wet ashtray and dog hair...

Anyhoo - they too follow, with kind and loud and simian-like offers to renovate my camera and my face.

I get to the Oakville Number 1 Bus and climb aboard. The two belt-below-bums stop at the doors and make threatening noises, but I think they were intimidated by the fact that everyone at the front of the bus was staring at us.

The original clueless Bozo gets on and goes to the back of the bus. I blow him a kiss and smile.

He's still there - trying hard to look like he somehow gained from the encounter - when I get off.

The upshot? Rude and idiotic sociopathic smokers at Oakville station, like herpes, crabs, crabgrass, malaria and Conservative administrations, keep turning up despite the wonders of modern antibiotics, pesticides, and dawning common sense...

In a week or so I will have no need of GO for a whole two months, but come September I'm going to go back. I might even bring friends. Given the lack of enforcement by GO the crop of puffers should be really photo worthy by then...

Illiterate Oakville smokers.