October 1–3, 2002 — Talking with strangers

While Nathan and I were eating dinner, a man walked up and asked if either of us had a bank account. He needed a cheque cashed, he said, and didn’t have an account of his own.

I used the automatic, “No, sorry!” that I spit out each time I’m asked for change. Most people asking for change probably know that I’m lying, just as I’m sure the person with the dubious cheque knew I was lying.

Either way, I maintain that asking for change is a more reasonable request than asking to have a cheque cashed. I found myself wondering days later what sort of person would cash cheques for a stranger. I tried to decide if it was me or the person with the cheque who was more detached from reality...

A few nights later, I was picking up a new run of t-shirts from Nick, the person who prints them for me. We exchanged jokes with groan-inducing punchlines, and Nick told me about recently published theories on alternate dimensions and the origins of the universe. For the most part, it was the same as every other trip to pick up t-shirts.

Nick is moving to British Columbia. I will miss having someone to make t-shirts for me who cares so much about screen printing. I’ll also miss his regular updates into the world of quantum mechanics.

When I picked up Cuff the Duke shirts from Nick, he showed me a Roman coin that he bought for around $100. It was almost 2000 years old. It was someone’s life savings, and they buried it and died. Now everything they saved for is available for $100 at coin shops.

I’ve decided that I’ll only have someone else in Toronto screen shirts for me if he collects Roman coins, too. With bonus points awarded for telling jokes about frayed knots.

After I picked up my t-shirts, I took them home on the bus. I was the only passenger at the start of my trip, and the bus driver started talking to me. He said that Christmas was a few months off and that it was a bit early for carrying such large boxes on the bus.

We ended up having a long conversation about t-shirts, discussing the trouble of finding a competent screen printer in Toronto and current price fluctuations between 100% cotton and 50/50 t-shirts.

He was the most professional bus driver I’d ever seen. He carefully checked everyone’s transfer, and made two people pay again because their transfer wasn’t valid. After an older woman started yelling at him, he turned to me and commented on the prevalence of people coming onto his bus and telling him how to do his job. I nodded, trying to look neutral. I could feel the woman glaring at the back of my head.

Then, somehow, we ended up talking about our favourite examples of trash-talking in basketball. I had never felt more white. I took mine from an Adidas ad that I always see on the subway, saying that my favourite is, “You hope you packed some luggage for all that traveling you’ve been doing.” He laughed and said that his phrase of choice is, “Don’t sing it, just bring it.” He told me that he wants to get t-shirts made with that written on the front.

It was one of my better bus trips. I find myself hoping to see that bus driver whenever I take a bus on his route, and I wonder if he’ll remember me if I see him again.

I was on my way to work the next Saturday. My first day of work in four days; the hardest day. On the bus, a woman turned to me. I saw her talking, but I was listening to music. She was persistent. I unplugged my ears and heard her over the noise of the bus. Some people were looking at us.

“You have the hands of an artist. Let me see those.”

Stunned, I held out my hand. She didn’t touch me, she just looked closer. I was glad that she didn’t touch me.

“Yes, definitely the hands of an artist. Not sculpture... nothing as concrete as that. Finer art. Watercolours, maybe. No! I know what you’d really enjoy. Porcelain dolls. Painting the faces on porcelain dolls.” She went on to tell me where I could learn to paint faces onto porcelain dolls, and where I might be able to apprentice.

She asked me where I worked. I said IKEA. She said, “I can see why they’d like you there. There’s some Swedish in your background!”

This was news to me. Seeing the slight confusion on my face, she said, “Well, just a bit. An uncle. One that nobody talks about. Lots and lots of English. But a tiny bit of Swedish.”

She told me that she used to do this for a living. Figuring out who descended from who. Genealogy, I guess. But more of the sort that you find thrown in with a palm-reading session than the sort that is based on tracing birth and death certificates, as I understand it.

She went on to tell me that I also had some German — no, make that Austrian — in my blood. On my mother’s side.

Then she started talking about the end days when Jesus will return. She said it is prophesied that Jesus will be presented with a book of generations. She believes that this book will be a collection of genealogical charts on microfiche assembled by an international association that she once contributed to.

Then it was my bus stop.

I said, “Have a good day!”, and she said, “Ask your mother about your Austrian uncles!”

I put my earphones back in and walked the rest of the way to work.