The Nerd's Eye View

When things seem darkest, life seems to find a way of making you feel like you are just a big crybaby. For example, I've been walking around feeling sorry for myself due to the work sitiuation and some other issues. I missed my train home and had to take a later, slower, train. As we passed Sunnyvale, my commuter buddy and I were joined in our seats by a man from whom the odor ofalcohol wafted like a brick through a window. He was dishevelled but not completely shambling, and he spoke with a voice that was so gravelly as to be cartoonish (or at least like the voice of Froggy on the Little Rascals).

Claiming to be an "OG", and a Vietnam veteran (he even showed us his DVA card), he told us that his daughter had just bought him a ticket to Connecticut but that he'd given it back. He kept slapping my buddy on the knee and dispensing words of wisdom, and at some points I could barely keep myself from laughing. As I did though, I felt like a louse. I mean this was really tragic, the way this fellow had let himself go, and here I was yucking it up. I wondered if he really was a Ranger as he claimed. He got off two stops later, but the smell of him stuck with us till we got back to San Francisco. It took a ride back in the chill of the late afternoon to cleanse my nostrils of the smell nd only then was I able to put the whole thing out if my mind.