I try not to hate the 17 year old teenager on the bus who looks like a more attractive version of Brittany Spears and wears jeans so low that she must have to wax her bikini line because I can see the joints of her hip bones...at least a full inch of them, tanned and exposed between her very tight T-shirt and the her cheap Delia's's's belt. I was initially amused by this girl and the slightly shorter clone she hangs with who has "sidekick" written all over her, and who always looks just a little less inauthentically happy, even as they very audibly giggle and engage in animated conversation designed to capture the attention of anyone and everyone who might care to know that they are really, truly, much more pleased with their lives then you could ever be. I even felt a little sorry for them, because, really, that look is so 2002, and their alternapunk counterparts seem a little more Portland appropriate, a little more prepared to be accepted in college, a little less apt, to, you know, reinstate their virginity in some fundamentalist fad a year after graduation or end up with 12 children or as a stripper who understands that "you need to really get ahead".
so I sit and stare at her and them on the bus and I'm sure this makes them uncomfortable, and I try not to have an emotional response to all that they represent and all the horrible memories they bring back about highschool. or at least I tried, until I she picked up a new habit, a new affectation that rendered all bets null and void.
singing. that's right, singing. in between bouts of chatting and giggling and bred affectation she breaks out into tiny snippets of song, little crescendos of top forties hits. Apparently she has noted that her simple presence and strips of key exposed flesh do not garner enough of a spotlight anymore, so as she is talking to her friend she just randomly, as if she has some form of tourettes or something, sings a line, a couplet, humm a few bars from what might be her next big hit.
this is inexcusable.
now, now, I know this is unfair. perhaps her heart is just filled with song and she isn't uptight enough to restrain it's choral outcries. perhaps she just wants to sing and doesn't give a fuck what other people think. perhaps
but even with the mos beautiful and liberal allowances applied there is no escaping the fact that this is annoying as hell
and, in the end, actually one of my pet peeves
now, I have know other people who do this, even people I like
but I have never understood or enjoyed whatever odd proclivity or lack of restraint it is that makes people think that they should channel live 105 like some sort of malfunctioning antenna that only comes in at the oddest breaks in conversation.
it alternately alienates me and makes me want to suggest a medication that might better enable them to filter their random outbursts
but mostly it just seems like some sort of prima donna center stage mood, designed to simultaneously get attention and let people know that you have better things to do than focus on the conversation at hand, that some part of your brain is so distracted your music and other things that make you YOU that you can't even be bothered to sing to yourself, quietly IN YOUR BRAIN, like all the other, more polite, people with functioning social skills do.
She has a very nice voice, by the way.
7 comments:
I knew A LOT of girls like that in Los Angeles. Posers, all of them. Vying for attention in places like the supermarket or the mall or Universal Citywalk. I hate girls like that. Truly insecure. Extra annoying. With that little extra pinch of stupid spice in the fact that they have to prove how wonderful and great they are...in front of hundreds of people, of course. I have no love for showoffs like that. Good showoffs know how to work their variety of talents naturally in their day-to-day lives. Girls like that, Britney Spears' clones, know nothing of subtlety, know nothing of grace or elegance. They know nothing of the importance of intimacy. And, no, I'm not saying this because I'm "just jealous and don't have the guts to make a scene". I don't need to make a scene. The scene is in my head, in my heart, on my tongue in a not-so-obviously-loud conversation filled with far better things than clips of pop music and the occassional chitter of stupidity.
manners are on the decline; it used to be only schizophrenics who would sing on buses, but these days any youngin might think she has the privilege of invading strangers' space like that
when I was a 13-year-old skater-punk, I used to do obnoxious things on buses too
you should write that good all the time.
hmmm, I'm not sure whether to say thank you, or hang my head in shame that I don't
I love this image of you: sort of cranky, contemplative, and hateful staring without blinking at annoying teenagers. The singing is definitly an annoying distraction from the melange of odd smells on the bus. Still I can't help but imagine this scene including that bus rider i call the "sweat-suit wearing clandestine masturbator" visualizing you and the Brittany clones making a clone-jew oreo.
I wait expectantly for teh next installment of "Rage of the daff0dil"
well, hell, I know I maybe should blush, but honestly it's flattering to think anyone even notices I exist on a bus full of highschool girls
Your light shines too. Probably brighter than those Sun-In blonde highlights in the Britney clones' hair.
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