Thinking back to those childhood scare stories (Want some candy, little boy? Your daddy sent me to get you. Get in.), I turned tail and ran, for the second time that day. And I don't flee all that often, under normal circumstances. My friend cruised by two minutes later and whisked me off to safety and the comforts of a home away from home.
My other trips--from N.J. to Manhattan, cab rides across the City, subways to and from Brooklyn (my ancestral home), a bus ride to yet another close friend, this one in Washington, the bus ride back to New York--passed without major incident. Well, almost. I had planned to take an early bus back from Washington on Sunday morning, meeting one of my Harvard friends at Port Authority (this time fastidiously avoiding all religious freaks and bums and whatevers), there to get on a Boston-bound bus after lunch to return to school.
I had it all figured out, and written down a note to myself--four-and-a-half hour bus ride, wake at 8 a.m., leave house at 9, get on 10 a.m. bus and arrive in New York at 12:30. I had successfully completed the first few steps of the program and was confortably ensconsed on the Greyhound when the driver said (at least this one used the P.A. system), "Ten o'clock to New York, arriving Port Authority at 2:20. No smoking..."
The magnitude of his statement only hit me later on. In a classic cinematic double take--which obviously warmed the cockles of the woman behind me--I realized that my non-existent mathematical proclivities had once again done me in. Ten plus four-and-a-half equals 2:30, not 12:30. We were non-stop and there was no way to call my friend and warn him. So I waited calmly, read my book, and wondered just how pissed off he would be.
Luckily, this is one story with a happy ending. I rushed off the bus at 3 in New York (40 minutes late, natch) only to find my friend sitting on his suitcases on the nearby line for the Boston bus, playing his guitar and talking quietly to three new-found friends. Some people are just better travelers than others, I guess, and my friend is definitely in the former category. We reached Boston by early evening, went out to dinner, had a good conversation, and prepared for next day's classes.
He had, however, also bought a copy of the Bhagavad Gita from the ubiquitous Hare Krishna folks in Port Authority. Then again, nobody's perfect.