After spending much of the summer in Pittsburgh, we finally got my INS green card interview scheduled for the end of September in Montreal. It's only been about three years since my wife filed the I-130 application, a document that is essentially how one needs to ask the U.S. government the question: "Look who I married, can I bring him home with me?"
One of the prerequisites of getting the green card is passing a medical; in Canada there are maybe 15 practices that are approved by the INS to perform the exams.
A one-way Greyhound ticket from Pittsburgh to Toronto is about $55 ($49 if you buy it more than a week before you need it). But that low, low price doesn't just buy you a ride - it comes with entertainment, too: Bus People.
"Bus People aren't like regular people," says a friend of mine. "There are types of Bus People: Talker People, Crazy People, Phlegm People. Sometimes one Bus Person is a mixture of types of People. You could have a Crazy Talker Phlegm Drunk Snoring Person sitting beside you from Toronto to Kapuskasing. That's why I don't ride the bus anymore."
The first leg of the Pittsburgh-Toronto trip is a local run to Erie, Pennsylvania. The bus cruises along several State highways through gently rolling hills, farmland and forest, stopping in places like New Castle, Sharon, Meadville and Edinboro.
And Talking Man is across the aisle and one seat ahead of me, talking to a lady in the seat in front of me. She is so old she is practically dust, which means, among other things, that she is far too polite to tell him to JUST SHUT UP ALREADY. Talking Man starts even before the bus has pulled out of the terminal; as the bus rolls over the Sixth Street Bridge he's already telling her how his grandparents came in their 20s to Pittsburgh. How he, himself, went on a tour of the Heinz plant "and every one of us got a pickle pin with a little white number 57 on it." How "this whole area used to be called Deutschland." How "the best Mexican restaurant not on the West Coast is run by a buddy of mine in Franklin, PA." How his uncle coached pro football - "he started in the Canadian League, and then came down here and worked with the Steelers."
The little old lady, no doubt worn by the onslaught, told him she was tired and was going to rest. And so Talking Man fell silent. For about a minute. Then he cranked it up again with recipe tips - "I make a mean mako. What I do, basically, is I steam it, then I grill it." With fishing laments - "you can't catch good fish anymore." With pithy observations - "women today can't cook. My ex-wife couldn't cook." NOT WHEN SHE CAN'T EVEN HEAR THE EGG TIMER OVER YOUR INCESSANT CHATTER, YA FREAK, I wanted to scream.
Talking Man got off the bus in Meadville. Almost immediately I was struck by a strange sound. It was the sound that comes from five or ten simultaneous conversations in a small space; I realized that people had been talking to their seatmates for the whole trip but the area around Talking Man was acoustically dead, drowned in the sea of white noise that was his endless nasal-toned monologue.
And I'm sure the little old lady was bleeding from the ears when he left.
