Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Why I need to buy headphones

The most obnoxious thing happened to me on the bus on Monday morning. I got off the MAX to go catch my connecting bus and ran into this girl who also works on the Hill as well as volunteers at Our House. She thinks that we are better friends than we are and I’m OK with her believing that as long as I don’t have to do anything, like hang out with her. Either way, we start chatting and get on the bus. We sat down together and chatted some more before she noticed my bracelet.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been wearing a bright yellow Live Strong bracelet. My roommate gave it to me, and since every cent of the proceeds benefit Lance Armstrong’s cancer foundation, I feel pretty good about wearing it.

Now, this girl glanced at my bracelet and said, “Oh, you’re wearing one of those.” I looked at what she was pointing at and said, “Yeah, it’s great.”

“Well, my friend and I looked into that and decided that we couldn’t support it since Lance Armstrong is just a big cheater.” She settled back with a little self-satisfied smirk on her face.

Mind you, it is 7:30am on a Monday morning. I am lucky that I am wearing clothing that matches and covers my entire body at this point. I am nowhere near a coherence place where I want to start aggressively debating drug testing and guilt. I just sort of looked at her, tilted my head sideways and said, “I am so not going to talk about this.”

She got this patronizing look on her face and said, “Oh, is this something you get emotional about?”

I stared back in disbelief and just said, “No, but I do believe that we are talking about a five-time Tour de France champion who happens to be the single most frequently tested athlete on the planet.”

“Well, all I’m saying is that he’s a cheater.”

“Well, you can believe whatever you want, but I’m still not going to talk about this right now.” She finally started jabbering on about her ex, who was obsessed with bike racing and all this other stuff, so I sort of tuned her out and nodded the rest of the bus ride.

All I really wanted to do was get on the bus, sit down and finish The Da Vinci Code. What was wrong with that?!?

Quote of the Day: “I wanna say a little something that I hold to be true/The disrespecting women has got to be through/To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends/I want nothing but love and respect till the end.” Sure Shot, Beastie Boys

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