Two weeks ago, I had a fun start to my day thanks to this crazy guy on the bus. His non-stop monologue went something like this, “And the rich have achieved their maximum of wealth. They can’t get any richer. Now we’ve reached the crest of the economic wave and then they will tip down into the trough of poverty. You see it turns around and turns around and turns around. The wealthy get poorer, and the poor get wealthier. We, the people, want to start a movement where every human being is aware of their capacity to merge into a group consciousness.”

On and on it went. Fifteen minute ride with fifteen minutes of this stuff. The guy was deep and at times brilliant, and he never stopped talking. I mean it. He. Never. Stopped. Talking. No pauses to gather his thoughts or to sip from a bottle of water. He spoke like he was reading off an invisible teleprompter.

At the next stop, an old black guy sat down next to me and said, “Skinny guy squeezing in.” An old white guy said, “You’re welcome to sit down as long as you don’t start talking.” They laughed. I smiled, then put on my game face and plugged in my  deaf-to-the-world Dr. Dre’s. Tried to keep up the don’t-talk-to-me attitude but Crazy Guy was killing me. My shoulders started to shake, my face twitched. I was busting with laughter. So hard I almost cried.

Un-fucking-believable. Crazy Guy made my day. In fact, he made everyone’s day. Strangers spoke to each other, started making eye contact with each other. We became a community, merged into a group consciousness.

A while back somebody asked me why I still take the bus. This, my friends, is why I take the bus. Not theater-in-the-round. It’s theater-on-the-go. All for a buck fifty.