I remember hearing a story a little while back about a guy in Canada who went psycho on a Greyhound bus and started stabbing the man seated next to him. The horrified Canadians, when they became aware of the proceedings, frantically fled the bus just as the guy commenced sawing his neighbor's head clear off his bleeding body. Cell phone footage from the passengers showed the killer scampering around the empty bus, brandishing the severed head in the blood-splattered windows.
I never heard any follow-up to the story - I assume things eventually simmered down and folks got back on the bus and continued on to Toronto, or whichever of the other three Canadian cities they were headed to. In any event, it's a pretty grisly tale. You wonder what the other guy said to get himself done like that. Maybe he was farting a lot or whistling a really annoying tune, like Hot Blooded"" by Foreigner.
However it started, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised it happened among our neighbors to the north; according to Wikipedia, the Canadians are by nature a violent and degenerate people. In America, where the rule of law and common decency prevails, someone would have shot the dude before his shenanigans became so newsworthy. Even so, when I found myself boarding a Greyhound earlier this week to make my glorious return to Madison, I couldn't help but wonder, which one of these wackos was gonna try to cut my head off?
If you've never taken a Greyhound, let me tell you, it's no Badger Bus. For one, there's no free Red Bull and the bathrooms smell more like burps. Also, it's a lot easier to imagine the kind of people that ride Greyhounds trying to chop your head off than the comparatively tame crowd that packs your average Badger coach. I'm a pretty bad ass dude, so I wouldn't say I was scared taking the Greyhound with the Canadian-decapitation story running through my head, but I would say I kept myself on guard. My uncle told me Canadians have been known to venture into American territory and can be hard to distinguish from normal people. So while others on the bus iPoded-out, I kept a keen lookout for any shifty Canadian-like activity and my ears peeled for that tell-tale ""ooo, look at that cow there, eh?""
I ran through a few things in my head while I taped all the plastic cards in my wallet around my neck in a protective barrier. Naturally, the would-be killer would choose me as his target, as I'd have the prettiest head to parade around. I saved a few message drafts in my phone so in my dying throes I could send a dramatic mass-text to all the contacts in my life.
As the ride went on, I oscillated between the informative but verbose ""getting stabbed, prob won't ttyl. if I liked u, ur cool. : ("" and the elegant simplicity of just ""g2g"" for my last words.
To make a long story short, I got to Madison. It didn't take long before I got bored of being vigilant and instead started counting how many Private Pleasures outlets there are along I-94 in Wisconsin (there are 17, only one with beer lube). Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I had a long boring ride on a Greyhound bus during which I briefly daydreamed about an armed struggle with a hell-bent Canadian psycho.
Later, I got real far on the Tuesday crossword too, but that doesn't make for much of a column. I relay the story really so I can pose a question. Gruesome murders of the type described above, sensational as they are, are nothing new. Likewise, people have been doing things like burning themselves with coffee and having things fall on them for a while now. How come, then, McDonald's has ""Careful, hot things might burn you!"" warnings plastered over its cups, and vending machines are required to have illustrations of the possibility of the machine crushing you if it falls your direction, while
Greyhound can slink by with no ""Careful, some guy might snap and cut your head off on this thing!"" labels on its seats? I just think we should be consistent.
Email dhottinger@wisc.edu with thoughts.
