\u201cNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
My mind reels at the horror that I cannot yet process.\u00a0 I feel for the top button of my jersey and my sunglasses are gone.\u00a0 I shine the light down into the silver bowl and I see the darkly glistening surface of the sloshing liquid unbroken.<\/p>\n
\u201cNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
I tried to deny it.\u00a0 I tried to pretend that it couldn\u2019t possibly be so.\u00a0 But there was no other possibility.\u00a0 I had the glasses when I came in and they were no longer\u00a0where they were supposed to be.\u00a0 I heard a splash when I bent over.\u00a0 There was only one answer:\u00a0 they were in the drink.<\/p>\n
My first thought was one of rage: \u00a0\u201cI just bought those!\u201d\u00a0 They didn\u2019t cost all that much but I really liked them.\u00a0 And somehow I knew something like this was going to happen.\u00a0 I was quite familiar with my particular brand\u00a0of luck.\u00a0 I briefly considered abandoning them to the bowels of the bus.\u00a0 I mean, for God\u2019s sake, I had just done my business<\/span><\/em> in there!\u00a0 Many other people before me had done their<\/em> business in there!\u00a0 I had no idea where the flush was or even if there was<\/em> a flush.\u00a0 There was no telling if ANYONE had flushed before I got there.\u00a0 I could be reasonably certain that it was all liquid, as we hadn\u2019t been on the bus that long or stopped for lunch, so I was at least spared that possibility.\u00a0 But I couldn\u2019t even guess how many other people had come before me.\u00a0 Face it, it was GROSS!!!<\/p>\n But I was angry.\u00a0 I hadn\u2019t even had those glasses\u00a0three weeks, worn them maybe three times, and now they were lost.\u00a0 No.\u00a0 I refused to be\u00a0dealt this\u00a0fecal-infested hand yet again by some unrelenting, vengeful God who saw fit to torture, tease and persecute me at every turn.\u00a0 I refused to be screwed yet again by a world that had already given me the shaft and forced me to fight uphill for every little thing I wanted, to eke out a meager existence of squalor and denial because of dumb choices I made when I was a stupid kid fresh out of college.\u00a0 No!\u00a0 I refused to be treated this way yet AGAIN.\u00a0 I would have my glasses back no matter what it took.\u00a0 I would make this stand, here and now, and declare to the world that I am worthy of existence, that I will not be treated like Fate\u2019s chew toy.\u00a0 This is my line in the sand and I will not take it any more!\u00a0 It was this anger that made my decision for me.\u00a0 So, full of righteous anger and unabashed fury, I pulled my left\u00a0sleeve up to the elbow and plunged in.<\/p>\n I had to go in all the way\u00a0up to the wrist before I found them.\u00a0 But they were there!\u00a0 They hadn\u2019t disappeared down some dark chasm from whence there was no return.\u00a0 I had momentary flashes of the opening scene of \u201cTrainspotting\u201d where Ewan MacGregor goes head first down hell\u2019s own crapper to retrieve his lost suppositories.\u00a0 I was glad it wasn\u2019t that bad, though I was angry enough to consider going that far if need be.<\/p>\n I tried pulling them up but, of course,\u00a0lost my grip halfway out and had to go back for a second try.\u00a0 This time I made sure I had them tightly in my grasp and drew them out of the mire.\u00a0 Then I quickly started to look for a sink.\u00a0 And, of course, I couldn\u2019t find one.<\/p>\n What kind of bathroom was this?!?!\u00a0 There was no light switch, no flush and no damn sink!!!\u00a0 I found a pump bottle of hand sanitizer on a small ledge and damn near emptied the thing trying to sterilize my glasses, hand and anything else I could\u00a0reach.\u00a0 I used so much sanitizer that the gel started to spill over onto the floor.\u00a0 I figured that could only help the situation.\u00a0 Now I looked for a paper towel.\u00a0 Guess what?\u00a0 I finally just grabbed some toilet paper and attempted to use it as a substitute.\u00a0 Needless to say, it crumbled under the pressure.\u00a0 I had to get out of there.\u00a0 Nothing good was coming of a prolonged stay in that claustrophobic, plutonian hell hole.\u00a0 And the pounding on the door was becoming more insistent.<\/p>\n I made my way back to my seat, sunglasses at arm’s length\u00a0pinched firmly between forefinger and thumb, mouth clamped shut and doing my best to\u00a0erase the lingering traces of my grimace.\u00a0 I was just glad I had two seats to myself.\u00a0 Despite being drenched in sanitizer, I didn\u2019t want to come any where near those damn things again until they had either been boiled, washed or both.\u00a0 Preferably both.<\/p>\n I tried not to let the incident bother me, though, as you can imagine, it wasn’t easy.\u00a0\u00a0One of the few things that did go my way was that my hand didn\u2019t come back “lavatory blue”.\u00a0 I was thankful for that small mercy.\u00a0 I\u2019ll take the breaks where I can get them as they seem to come so rarely.\u00a0 But you better believe that, once off that bus, I made a beeline for the nearest fully functional restroom I could find.\u00a0 I think the 3 or 4\u00a0successive “lather, rinse, repeats”\u00a0weren\u2019t entirely unwarranted.\u00a0 I mean, I still had a cheese steak I\u00a0needed to eat and you can\u2019t do that without two hands.\u00a0 What\u2019s a trip to Philly without a cheese steak?\u00a0 It\u2019s like a bathroom without a sink.\u00a0<\/p>\n Oh, wait\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cNOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!\u201d My mind reels at the horror that I cannot yet process.\u00a0 I feel for the top button of my jersey and my sunglasses are gone.\u00a0 I shine the light down into the silver bowl and I see the darkly glistening surface of the sloshing liquid unbroken. \u201cNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!\u201d I tried to deny it.\u00a0 I tried … Continue reading