Pickles, Butts and PhDs

I got to the stop early and sat down on a bench at the 9^th & Peach stop. My phone’s battery is all but dead so I figure I’ll ask the only other person at the stop.

He is a neatly dressed guy about 60,  sitting there looking at the sidewalk.

“Are you waiting for the Route 31?” I ask him.

“I’m not waiting for the bus,” he tells me, “I like to sit here and observe people. Then he adds, “You know, they don’t usually say hello.”

“Who doesn’t?”

“PEOPLE! Only one in ten say hello back.”

I notice he has a beer can pretty well wrapped in cloth. As a young man walks by, he says hello, and then informs me, “They call him Butt Man.”

“Should I ask why?”

“Because he likes to go around picking up cigarette butts." he explains. "Of course me, I just like to look at butts.”

“I see.”

He notices me writing in a notebook and asks what I am doing. I tell him I write to keep from being bored while waiting at the bus. This changes the tone of the conversation, and he suddenly becomes serious..

“You know I have a PhD,” he tells me. “I suppose you want to know how a PhD got homeless,” he says.

“No, I wasn’t wondering that,” I told him. “Stuff happens.”

“Stupid,” he says. “I was stupid.”

And then he tells me his “stupid story.” It wasn’t really stupid, but it was long and detailed and not any more interesting than anyone else’s stupid story. Finally, mercifully, my bus arrived.

I saw him a few more times that summer. Same thing, sitting at the 9^th & Peach bus stop working on some beer and telling his story.

The last time involved pickles. He had found a huge unopened jar of pickles and was offering people a pickle as they passed by. He offered me one and I said No thanks, I’m good.