Ever wonder what it would be like to have people stare and laugh at you day in and day out for something you can’t help? They’re not staring at you because there’s something nice to look at, they’re staring at you because you have a disorder that you were born with. They’re not laughing at you because you’re funny, they’re laughing at you because you’re Narcoleptic and you fall asleep at random and this is supposed to be hilarious.
I ride the Mississauga Transit bus home from work four times a week and there is the same narcoleptic man there every single time. He’s probably in his 30s and is always dressed sloppy business casual. He takes a seat and immediately gets a fleeting urge to sleep. He loses all motor control, drops dead, and involuntarily falls asleep. The “funny part” is that when he falls asleep, he flings his head all the way back, drops his jaw all the way down, spreads his legs from side to side, snores like thunder, and sleeps like that for three or four minutes, and then he wakes back up. This repeats itself over and over. And as if these involuntary sleeps aren’t a big enough nightmare as is – an even bigger one awaits. Each time he wakes up from every single one of these helpless episodes, the first thing he sees are full grown men and women laughing, taking photos, or staring with appalled faces – behaviour that you’d expect from twelve year olds who don’t know any better.
I can’t even begin to understand how he feels. I am one of maybe five people in the entire bus that keep a straight face in an effort to prove a point to the idiots who seem to think that this illness is a bus ride comedy. People start looking my way to guide me to the narcoleptic man with their eyes to get me in the loop with what they’re laughing about because they’re thrown off by my disinterest. Thank you for the effort but I know exactly what’s so funny and I just don’t think it’s funny at all, and neither should you if you were any smarter. It’s getting harder and harder to bite my tongue with each ride. Gah.
Photo below was taken in Amsterdam. If you look closely, the photos on the display window are of naked women. I think they’re postcards. I didn’t realize this until I was editing the photo. Amsterdam scares me but the city makes good photos, so I can’t complain.
