Friday, January 8, 2010

Alone at a Bus Stop


This is probably the event that made me want to start this blog. To describe myself I am a white male, a little bit over weight and can be found more often listening to music made with guitars rather than drum machines. Because of this disposition I am rarely seen dancing. In the summer of 2005 I was determined to rectify this situation, and was lucky enough to be friends with a group of fellow University students who were studying musical theater performance. So I set up a secret meeting with one of them to help me learn to dance (now I know this sounds a bit like a movie at this point but I assure you it is not). This secret meeting took an awkwardly entertaining 2 hours where I leaned from a friend 3 or 4 stock dance moves to help me look less like an idiot while attempting to dance. Even after that lesson I am still intimidated by dancing in public, but find myself dancing a lot while alone and listening to hip-hop music (I still haven't figured out how to dance to rock music).


About a month after I moved to Minnesota I started attending trivia night at one of the bars in the Cities with some friends. I quickly learned that the bus is the best way to get to and from a bar in the city. My ride home often is as late as 1 o'clock in the morning. This gives me a pretty powerful experience of standing at a bus stop in a major US city and feeling completely alone. The environment at my bus stop is normally busy as its near the University of Minnesota and two major freeways, there are usually cars constantly driving in front of it and almost always people waiting for the bus. In the wee hours of the morning on a week day it is almost a ghost town. On this particular evening I had enjoyed the standard products that one buys at a bar and was feeling quite happy with myself. The weather had started to get chilly and when I arrived at my bus stop I was alone save for a car driving by about once every 5 minutes. For whatever reason I felt compelled to put on Jay-Z's the Black Album while I waited. Feeling completely, comfortably alone I started to dance to keep warm. I waited for that bus for at least 45min.


Thinking back on that evening, if I would have seen myself I would have laughed like crazy. White kid, standing at a bus stop, poorly dressed and dancing his pathetic best. What rich comedy (or possibly heartwarming delight, depending on your persona).

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