taxidermy major

So this guy walks onto the bus.  He’s not necessarily fat, but he’s big.  His singular, fierce eyebrow clenches along with the rest of his face as he plops down next to the helpless middle-aged woman.  After less than a minute, he starts talking to her.

“I’ve been waiting for this bus since 9:17 and it’s almost ten now!  That means I won’t get to Carnegie until 10:15.  I’m a member of the committee, dammit.  How’s that look if I’m a member of the committee and I’m late?”

The helpless lady shrugs at his suit, trying not to make eye contact.  I look to the cute pre-med next to me and she’s giggling at this young man’s ridiculousness.  Actually, everyone on the bus is giggling, but trying to be discrete about it.

As the bus makes sharp turns, the suited malcontent almost squashes the woman sitting next to him and I am conversing with my friend, who is sitting behind me.  He keeps tapping me on the shoulder to make points about how the next Matrix movie won’t suck as bad as the second one, but I’m trying to ignore him and hit on this brunette.  She’s trying to ignore me too, so she can study for her fake patient examination.  We are none of us succeeding at ignoring.

Now that we’re in town, some of the people have left the bus.  I’m still talking to my 6-foot tall bearded friend when suit guy turns around and asks if we go to Pitt.  There’s a girl sitting in the seat between my friend and suit man and she looks up.  “Are you talking to me?” she asks.

For now, we’re safe while she distracts him.  I think this guy might have some sort of social deficit because he is interrupting her and making statements like: “I graduated from Robert Morris College.  I’m an accountant.  Do you even know anything about that?  I wouldn’t expect you to.”

And I have to jump in, because I just can’t stand the sound of his voice anymore.  “Oh yeah, well I’m majoring in taxidermy, do you know anything about that?” 

The beast is stunned for a minute, and my friend has to get in on the act.  “That’s nothing compared to Mortuary Science.  Only the top 15% of all the applicants can get into Pitt’s Mortuary Sciences program.”

Now the other seven or eight passengers are giggling as we banter back and forth about our obviously made-up majors and eyebrow guy has no idea, but he’s interested.  “So what, does that mean if I find some roadkill you can like, stuff it?”

“Nah,” I say, “I don’t waste my time on roadkill.  Usually just big game like deer or big fish.  I had this one guy bring me a fish he caught and asked if I could mount it and make it into one of those singing Billy Bass.”

My friend is laughing a little, but still manages to keep his composure.  “You should have seen this corpse we had to chop up the other day.  It’s like pulling the stuffing out of a turkey at Thanksgiving.”

I’m grasping for a response to this and Mr. Accountant is rapt.  “Do you have to deal with a lot of pedophiles in that kind of work?” he asks.

The future mortician looks a little confused. “Don’t you mean necrophiles?”

I smile.  “Well, they could be dead children…”

Studying Uni-brow’s mug, I notice that every twenty seconds or so he seems to make this face like he’s constipated, but only for a second.  My guess is that it’s some kind of involuntary facial muscle spasm. 

My friend looks over at me.  “Hey, did you study for your TSAT?  I heard those are only a few weeks away…”

I light up.  “Oh, you mean the Taxidermy Standardized Assessment Test?  I studied but it’s not until—“

Our victim jumps in.  “What’s that, like the Taxi Driver Test for New York taxi drivers?”

And me and my accomplice exchange confused glances, but the kid continues.  “You know, a joke.  That was a joke.  Don’t you guys get jokes?  I guess you don’t.”

We giggle and now nobody on the bus will make eye contact with any of us, afraid they might laugh too loudly and ruin the atmosphere of this situation.  The lady on the other side of the aisle taps the guy on the shoulder and says, “Isn’t this your stop?”

And he disembarks.  And we are all of us laughing triumphantly.  Even the bus driver, who has been listening to this whole debacle, is amused.  “I’m glad somebody got that guy.  He was a jerk.”