About 10 minutes into my journey, I (and everyone else on the bus) discovered that the bus had the wrong route number on it. We discovered this when the driver made an unexpected turn and started heading the wrong way. This was okay with me, since I most sincerely wanted off that particular bus. The woman behind me was crying and telling me that she needed a lock of my hair because I radiated such love and peace.

She kept trying to take a lock of my hair. This is freaky, even to me.

She said she wanted it for some sort of love and protection spell. Now, the anthropologist in me says, “I’m sure there was no harm in humoring her.” Nevertheless, as much as I claim not to believe in whatever it was she was doing – I have to admit I didn’t let her have my hair because the paranoid part of my brain kept saying, “Don’t let her have the hair. She could put a spell on you. And it might not be good.”*

I got off the bus and she stayed and all was right with the world. Until the woman on the next bus decided my diet was deficient in salmon.

By the time I fled that bus, I had a bag full of salmon recipes – from old can labels she had stashed in her powerbook carrying case.

I still don’t get the attraction. I know me, and I wouldn’t walk up to me and start talking to me if I wasn’t me. I just don’t get it.