These guys were exuberant, friendly, and full of life.
It took me several hours to piece together the clues that these guys had just been released from the San Luis Obispo Men's Colony.
Clues: (1) the fact they split up on the bus, not sitting together, (2) the guy behind me chatting up this girl across the aisle, (3) that both of them carried manilla envelopes with numbers written on the upper right corner (evidently personal effects), (4) the guy behind me telling the girl that he's sick of talking to guys all the time, (5) his also describing a situation where "he was there when the cops came" but was evidently innocent, so he claims, and (6) the other guy later at the Santa Barbara train station shouted out, "I been cooped up so long -- I don't mind the noise!"
Anyway, in the afternoon I was sitting for a while in the same car southbound on the Pacific Surfliner. There are two things, gems, that I overheard which I would like to share, because I found them very interesting.
The first is a simple phrase.
One guy was ragging the other guy for his "bald head" (pronounced "bodd haid"). The bald guy responded with:
"Grass don't grow on a busy street!"The second is a piece of street knowledge, or urban legend, or as the teller no doubt believes it, "just plain facts":
There's a Chinese technique where they shake your hand, and by pressing certain veins in your hand, it gives you a blood clot in the head.
The teller of the story illustrated it well with gestures, pointing to the veins in his hand as he shook it in the air, and then at the side of his head as if it had a blood clot. The listener seemed to have some difficulty believing it, so the teller said "It's what I just said," and repeated the information. Then he elaborated:
Remember Bruce Lee, that old guy, was doing Kung Fu? Well his grandfather told him, "you're distorting the traditional Kung Fu." Because it's like a religion to them! But he kept on with his style of fighting. So they shook his hand, and they pressed a vein in his hand, and it gave him a blood clot in the head. They say it was, what, an aneurysm? Nah... they shook his hand, and they pressed a vein in his hand, and he got a blood clot in the brain.The teller was completely serious, and told the tale with such conviction that I was nearly convinced as I eavesdropped upon the conversation from about 5 rows away.
