Because of today's site-jumping, I am consumed with thoughts of bums.
No, not hind-quarters, naughty-head. Vagrants. Or transients, to be more specific.
I mean, are they really transient? Do they jump from city to city in funky gypsy style? Or is transient meant to suggest that they only exist for a short period of time? Perhaps they slowly transform into Something Else? I'm not sure. I, like many socially ignorant white males of Middle America, am not acquainted with any bums, and cannot say I am familiar with the ins and outs of the bum lifestyle. For all I now, there could be a new batch on the streets every 4 weeks, pressed into molds and cranked out for our benefit by The Government's Ministry of Guilt.
The only guy I was ever aware of, and he might not even have been a true vagrant, was a guy that I knew in Junior High that we called Worm, because of the cape he wore with the acronym W.O.R.M. on the back. And no, he wasn't in junior high with me. He was an adult. That's just the period of time in my life that I knew him. He hung out at the downtown bus station that I had to pass through to get from school to home, and he greased his bangs in such a way as to look like devil horns. I thought he was pretty cool, though I don't know that he was ever particularly articulate, because I can't remember what it was that he was always shouting at everyone about. Something about rugs or carpet, I think.
He's gone now, though I guess that happens to all transients. I don't frequent the downtown bus station much anymore, but I've been there several times both on foot and wheel in the intervening 18-some-odd years, and I've never seen him. I talked to a junior high era friend of mine about 10 years ago who said he saw Worm working at Dairy Queen, but I have my doubts.
I think he's become something that is more comfortable living beneath the streets, spending the last decade hatching a nefarious plan in his underground lair to cover the streets of "the surface world" with plush shag carpet.
I hope that's the case. I've always longed for roadways that were more comfortable to lounge on.
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