Wednesday, December 19, 2007

spooky bus

a creepy thing just happened: i was sitting here, in the cold little computer room upstairs, trying desperately to catch up on my google reader reading, about 6:45 in the a.m. i glanced out the window and saw a city bus driving past. something struck me as odd about it, and i realized suddenly that the displays which usually tell you where the bus is going instead said EMERGENCY CALL 911. and the one on the very back of the bus said HELP. so i ran downstairs and called 911 and described the situation. but now i have no way of knowing what happened! what was the emergency? the bus was pretty full of people -- were they all being held hostage, driven somewhere at the whim of a hijacker? was there a crazy person on the bus? but, wait, there's always a crazy person on the bus! i wanted to tell the 911 dispatcher to call me back and let me know what happened.

in other news, m and bean are in new york this week. m is chaperoning bean's school trip to the city. the report from yesterday was that shadowing kids at an expeditionary learning high school in the bronx was amazingly fun. bean said that the kids were great, really friendly and affectionate and interesting. a small group of them will come to maine some time this winter to shadow at bean's high school. they also took a long tour of that part of the bronx (i'm not sure exactly where the school is), which was unexpectedly fascinating. i think today is museum day, and tomorrow they'll see some historical sites. i am particularly jealous that they will get to go to the lower east side tenement museum, where i've always wanted to go.

in christmas news, i have adorned the tree with exactly one ornament so far. but i have baked myself nutty (everything except the almond bread is finished, stuffed into my happy freezer). i mailed off a big box to california yesterday, and i have one more long-distance item to order for one of m's sisters. now is the time, present-wise, to stop and take stock of what exactly we've purchased and what exactly there is left to do. i haven't wrapped much of anything yet... (chanting to myself, "don't panic. don't panic.")

oh, good. a bus just passed my window, and it is not displaying any desperate pleas for help.

3 comments:

pixiegenne said...

what the hell? post an update if you find out, won't you? my curiosity is peeked.

Liz Woodbury said...

my brother just told me that he has actually gotten ON a bus in chapel hill which was displaying just such a message (why? that i don't know), only to learn that the driver had accidentally pushed the emergency button or whatever. and i guess it's quite a production to get it turned off!

Mary said...

but what about the HELP sign in the back ???!!!! I want to know, too.