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THE STORY
Around midday at the back of a more or less full public transportation bus, I observed a youth
wearing a baseball cap and tuxedo jacket. This pereson suddenly accused the man standing next to
him of purposely stepping on his foot every time any passengers walked on or off the bus. The
accused man shouted that the youth smelled like sulfur and to "go tell someone who really cared."
The baseball capped individual quickly abandoned the dispute and threw himself into an empty seat.
Two hours later, I saw him in front of a bank engaged in earnest conversation with an attractive
female who was advising him to seek gainful employment, or at the very least find a competent dry
cleaner to launder the repulsive-smelling tuxedo jacket.
QUESTIONS
1. What kind of "English" is this? How would you describe it?
2. What sort of person do you imagine the speaker to be? What words or phrases in the passage
give you this impression?
3. What does the speaker reveal about him or herself? Level of education? Employment? Interests?
Love life?
4. Who is the speaker's audience? Who is s/he telling the story to? What makes you think this?
5. What effect do you think the speaker wants to have on the audience?
6. What would you say is the overall tone or voice of the passage? What in the passage conveys
this quality?
REVISION
Now that you've analyzed the story a little bit, it's time to have fun and rewrite it. The
following were originally intended to be guidelines for group work, but are also good examples in
general of how stories can be told through different styles.
GROUP ONE: "Exclamations"
Good grief! Twelve o'clock! Bus! Time for bus! Run! Run fast! Run for stop! What a lot
of people! Bus packed! Can't sit! Aren't we squashed! Ew! Weird smell! What a guy! What a
jacket! Tuxedo! Good grief! Imagine! Baseball cap too! What style! Not! Fight! How funny!
Not funny! Here we go! Stink! You stink! No! You stink! He does stink! Sulfur! Rotten eggs!
I'm gonna throw! What's he saying?! Feet! Stepping on feet! They're going to come to blows!
Help! Police! Someone! Do something! Yes! No! Whoa! Charge him! Well, I never! Unbelievable!
Tell someone who cares! Did he say that?! But it's true! Stinky guy! He's mad! No! He's sad!
He's - ?!?! What in sam hill?! He's sitting down! Down, I say! Walked away! No way! It's over!
Off! Get me off! Off, I say!! What a day! What a ride! What a smell! Breath! Air, air! Fresh!
Inhale! Look! Over there! It's him! A beaut! Look at her! She's talking to him! He smells!
He reeks! He should brush his teeth! Wait! I hear, I hear! Get a job! Ouch! Dry cleaner! Find
one! Yes! She's right!
GROUP TWO: "Abusive Attitude"
After sweating in the sun, the fume-ridden bus showed up, as if I liked standing next to
beef-cake Betty and her squawking kid. Ever smelled cat's urine on a warm day? Want a lick of my
fist? Wanna hear this story, or not? Wanna shut up? Wanna PAY ATTENTION?!! We're packed in like
cow paddies, may as well have been toilet ooze for flies, so stinking hot in that sheet metal of
vinyl hell. Wouldn't you know, someone's gotta be smart. Someone's gotta start mouthin' off.
Someone's gotta be stinkin' up what precious air any of us got. Filthy mongrel, hairy ears, dirty
baseball cap, who wants to see such crap dressed in a tuxedo jacket? The guy was a walking stink
bomb. Sure, step on the guy's toes, set him off, let us all breathe the reek of air fumigating
off this butt's jacket. Are ya' listening? Are you paying attention? Do I have to break your
nose? Twist your fat thumb? Have you been stickin' it up your dog's butt the entire time I've
been yakkin' or what? PAY ATTENTION! The freak of nature and a chicken's worst nightmare finally
sat his sorry butt down. Smell of freakin' eggs was everywhere. Someone fry up some bacon. Let's
all vomit our way out of this, does EVERY one have greasy hair on this bus? Buy some shampoo and
bathe like a human with a buck for soap. The guy can't even take a dame's hint - clean up your
sorry self, get a job, pay some taxes, don't be contaminating the air we breathe. I shoved him
two bucks to get that filthy jacket cleaned. Just call me Joe-freakin'-samaritan.
GROUP THREE: "Poetic/Dramatic"
Daisies bloomed golden white on a glorious afternoon of a purposeful community gathering. Rapid
as a tongue of flame, the mighty omnibus, emblazoned with hues of silver and rust, arrived with a
gush of unfamiliar wind. Hark! A warpath driven male charged forth with purpose and drive
uncharacteristic of someone so young, so hopeless looking, so nostril turning in his own primal
smell. Baleful discord erupted and soot came from a mouth, malignant with words harsh and fierce.
Despair became the passenger so cursed with fumes of unhatched warm eggs. So cursed felt the
passenger tortured by another's heavy foot of clumsiness and disregard. The earth sped by the panes
of this shipwrecked passage. Woe was the stinking man still virile yet unclean. Thus the
beaten-down youth sat amid the concerned yet fearful attendees. Behold! A striking lass of charm
and grace with soft dew-like words addressed the man of ravaged bewilderment. She was Aphrodite
emerging from the frosted glass doors of finances. She spoke like an angel of cleanliness, "Get
thee a job. Get thee a good dry cleaner. And love will find you, oh, man unworthy yet of the soft
swollen kiss of passion and freshly laundered linens."
GROUP FOUR: "Sinister/Edgar Allen Poe"
Curse the day you dare step upon a hell-bound bus filled with despair and rage. Weary the blind
man without a token. Cast off is the blind man without a token. We are blind, blind to sun and
moon and other people's shoes. Smut and grime enveloped the stop. And each and every one paid their
dues and entered the double door, which could easily crush a leg, or a man, or a fly not quite
escaping to the outside. Rank, as in stench, consumed the air each and every passenger breathed.
No man or woman was safe. No child immune to the smell of sulfur illuminating from the fibers of a
jacket once prom-like in its repose. Passengers sneakily and stealth-like passed by a man older,
more cunning, more verbose and full of venom than the lad of stench, who, as I failed to mention
prior, wore a baseball cap. A bat. Think about a bat. what does a bat but do? It swings, no, it
flies in the dark skies, screeching out a scream like none ever heard in the tombs of witches now
dead but full of heinous dreams of rat boiling. I fear I digress from my tale. "Go tell someone
who really cares," hissed the older passenger, hissed the older passenger accused of stepping upon
the feet of the man of stench, man of the bus filled with despair and rage. Wearily, the youth
sighed, and heaved a groan only an attic door makes when a dastardly child of a bastard dares to
pull the ceiling cord, a noose of temptation that ceiling cord. I digress once again, yet, two
hours after the noon hour, when the clocks and bells of the city chimed its two throngs, the stench
of a youth was seen carousing around a young female, much like oil dripping from the engine of a
cattle grinder. She should have been afraid, very, very afraid, but she was naive and ill-prepared
by her mother to fend off the advances of foul-smelling strangers. Overhear her now, her words
innocent and nonconfrontational: "Dear sir of many smells, please, do yourself and your health a
kind favor. Bathe. Bathe with scents of lavender and magnolia, bathe with the leaves of spring.
Here, take my hand, kiss it for the beauty of clean smells. And then do yourself another kind
favor, find a good dry cleaner. Let the attendant remove the threads of that jacket which was once
a tuxedo and clean, clean, clean with an air of sunshine and grace the fibers that reek of
inappropriate gasoline smells." The youth of stench responded with strangulation, the doe-like
deer's voice a curse of fallen angels ringing in his ears. Hear my tale and learn. Never step upon
a hell-bound bus. Better to be without a token. Better to walk to your final destination than ride
the River Styx to Hades and beyond to deeper pits of pain and despair.
GROUP FIVE: "Harlequin Romance"
A bus thrust to a stop. Should Ramone pay the one dollar? He had spent the last five days
mourning over Christina, a buxom equestrian. Yes, he smelled of horses and sulfur, but his heart
was pure and forlorn, his Christina had run off with a jockey. He was still wearing the tuxedo
jacket from the night of their engagement party. Who knew she would be in a stall romping around
with Paul? Paul, his best man, his best friend! Ramone paid the dollar, a ticket to nowhere. Life
without Christina no longer mattered. He shuffled upon the bus and found a seat. As he dreamily
imagined Christina in her mint-green chiffon gown on the night they first met, a stranger
repeatedly stepped upon his foot. Bastard! His thoughts of the seashore and Christina, like the sea
foam, were continually interrupted. Oh Christina, his beloved, how could she? But how could he?
This stranger, stepping once again upon his foot. Ramone felt he must act. His humiliation seemed
to know no bound. It was time to fight. Like a matador, he stood up in a rage of pulsing muscles.
"Do you mean to step on my boot, sir?"
"I don't, dear sir, but you stink!"
"I stink?" shouted Ramone.
"Yes, you stink!" exclaimed the stranger.
"Do you know why I still wear this jacket?" Ramone cried out.
"I care not to know," caroled the stranger.
"It is the last thing I was wearing when Christina, oh, Christina, I can hardly say her name
aloud to this banished bus of greed and shame," groaned Ramone.
"Tell someone who cares," the stranger snummbed unfeelingly.
Suddenly Ramone clutched his chest, died of heartache in the arms of the unfeelingly stranger.
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