Attack of the Green Beetle

I’ve been watching the beginning of the eighth season of American Idol and, as an unabashed fan, I felt like writing something.

And so it began as I was riding the #4---kinda like tomorrow Friday the 13th when all is weird with the world. Pulled up on a xe om to the bus station and boarded the dreaded bus. I'd waited for the second the bus, under the cowering burn of the day, because the first one had no seats, and this one was void. A young girl in her ao yai that should’ve been/be in the next frickin richin' commercial boarded at the first stop on Pasteur. Gotta love those winning smiles fit for a smile. Why? Next a handful of young guys boarded wearing their utility-government uniforms. Thanks be to God because most young guys are sleepers and leg-spreaders and won't give up their seats to a wee lil' ole lady. And then low and behold, a blind man gets handed onto the bus. With one eye closed and the other spun up into his skull, the ticket-taker, with motherly-love, guided him to a vacant seat. The thing about him was that he was carrying an expensive bag holding a pricey mobile. Who'd have the guts to steal from a blind man was the? Elderly pick-ups were dropped at the hospital. Continuing on a light drizzle began to fall and as fate would have it the driver played a rather interesting Westernized song list with “The Man Who Fell to Earth"; being the most absurd. It could’ve been Portland rain for all that mattered. Taking it in, I laughed inside because it's quite comical at least for me. Maintaining a wonderful Crest commercial pose ao yai girl exited and a diminutive elderly slung her way on to the bus with her wares which in my opinion were too heavy for her. Closer to my stop, I paused a moment to get up and make my way to the front exit because the rear exit was discombobulated. And as I sat there at the window cruising at light-speed (the bus, not me, being at light-speed which in layman’s terms is no traffic) a green beetle flew in and landed on my arm. Startled! I yelped and the guy next to me was taken aback as well. How often does an emerald beetle the size of your palm land on your forearm? I shook it off and made me way to the exit. The old woman made her beeline as well. All the while she rattled on in rapid-fire Vietnamese almost as though she was trying to help me. Me? And so we exited on our Cong Hoa stop with me picking up the rear and another gentleman holding the rear. The way the woman, who’d seen everything, the French, the Americans, and most of all the civil war, gripped my hand was nothing more than mind-altering. Oh yeah, no-one followed the blind man off the bus.

Next stop Phan Thiet…