Wise Molars

You usually run into some interesting people on public transit, but yesterday was particularly amusing:

1. The train I was riding was pretty empty. In my car, probably a full 1/2 to 3/4 of the seats were totally empty. Nevertheless, this one dude decided that he was going to sit next to me. In my view, there are some unwritten rules for dudes. First, even if you know the guy really well, you typically leave an empty seat between you in the theater. Second, talking to another guy while at the urinal is all fine and good, but typically the commode is not a place to chat. Third, generally you only sit next to a stranger on a train if there are no empty seats to choose from. Nevertheless, this guy just plopped down with no explanation. He seemed like a pretty regular guy, young, well dressed no clear signs of retardation.

2. The Navy Yard is close to the Nationals baseball stadium and they share a Metro stop. Yesterday was a game day. As I am proceeding to the escalator I run into a pretty portly fellow who is engaged in some sort of scam. At the moment I ran into him, he was finishing whatever tasty morsel he had ingested moments earlier, so his mouth was full. He has a number of baseball caps, probably about 25 or so, in his arm and he just shoves one at me. I try to wave him off, but he manages to choke down some, but not all, of his food and tells me, that they are giving away the hats. I should have just kept walking, but I didn't really hear him too well because his mouth was still quite full. He swallows again, and probably got 90% of the food down that time. Incidentally, the man must have taken an enormous bite or have a very small throat relative to his mouth size in order to have so much trouble swallowing a mouthful of food. He explains that they are giving away the hats and then gestures to another guy, also with a big stack of hats, and identifies him as a supervisor. He explains that they are giving away the hats but would like to collect money to donate to a women's shelter. I am not a National's fan, and I don't wear baseball caps, so I declined the offer. I tend to believe though that (a) the hats were stolen; and (2) the "women's shelter" was probably not going to see a nickel of whatever they "collected."

3. At the station near my house, people often set up shop playing music for money. Usually it is a saxophone or a drum, sometimes a guitar. However, this was something I was not expecting at all. A woman had set up shop with a full size Cello and a Harp! Just lugging one of those instruments would have taken some doing, but both was extraordinary. It was just her too, so she could only play one instrument at a time. People were not hanging around, so there was no chance that someone would get bored of listening to one instrument and wish that she would switch. The only thing more remarkable would be if someone had somehow lugged in a full size pipe organ out of a church. She also had a sign advertising CDs for sale. There was nothing remarkable about the sign except it made a big point of advertising that the CD that was available was CD #4! Maybe it had just been released that day, by her, and some eager commuter was looking to round out his collection. Or perhaps, she had issued #3 and #5 in large numbers and this was a limited release of #4, but for whatever reason, the main focus of the sign was that it was CD #4. Or at least the main focus of that sign, because she had a second sign that was awesome. This sign provided that she was due to have her wisdom teeth removed and that she would be unable to work for awhile. I really should have asked some questions, because there is so much I wonder about.

a. What type of job is particularly impacted by the removal of wisdom teeth? Is she a tooth model? Does she test gobstoppers for a living? Does she make videos that demonstrate how to properly grit your teeth?

b. If she has a job, in addition to playing incredibly large instruments in public, was this a way to supplement the income?

c. If this was her only job, why couldn't she continue doing this after the surgery. She had picked two instruments that require no input from the mouth. Perhaps if she dabbled in brass instruments or woodwinds, but she seemed to focus on the string instruments.

Alas, I just walked by and headed home.