Birds or fish?

It's interesting how you know who you're going to sit next to when you get on a bus, or matatu. You give them the look, the once-over to see if you can stand the person for the duration of the travel. Naturally, the longer the distance, the more picky we become. We then proceed to sit next to them as if this whole process didn't go over our minds in the space of seven seconds. And I know I'm not the only one who does it because once I choose my place to sit, I watch the people coming in next. I see the cogs and wheels in their minds running to do the math.

The person I sat next to was around my age. Heading to my friends' place in Kawangware, I couldn't have picked a better seat. Dan, seeing as if I was a damsel in distress, or a blonde, asks me,

" You know you're on a bus to Kawangware?"

To which I reply most graciously,
" Yes."

He shrugs and looks at his phone. And, because I don't usually pull out a phone when I'm travelling, I look at his phone too. I see him googling - how to make a girl laugh. Then he looks at me and sees me seeing him and I think to save face, he says,
"I don't understand you girls."

Right about now I'm already in over my head with the number of unexpected things that have happened to me in half a day, so I say nothing.
" Hello? any advice?" he asks.

"I guess just be yourself" I say right around the time he says,
"don't tell me to be myself."

 We both laugh. His is a hearty laugh, the laugh of someone who knows they're right 99 percent of the time. Mine is an embarrassed one, for my lack of originality.

"Really, do you people ever just give a guy a chance? a real one?"

I look at him about to ask him who the girl is and he asks me another question.

"Do I have to have riches to get someone like you?"

And it hits me that he thinks I'm a rich girl. no wonder he was shocked when I didn't get off at Lavington.
"You think I'm rich?"

"Obviously, you look like you have a bedroom bigger than my whole house" then he looks down as if he's ashamed for speaking his mind.

"How can you tell?"

Well, first from your dressing," I point at another girl in sweatpants and a t-shirt, just like me.

"Okay," he concedes "I think then its your look, you're confident (looks at my different shades of blue hair) you just look it,"

"Because I'm lightish?"
"
No, its just,... you look and smell like wealth."

"Do I now?"

At this point I'm just teasing him, I ask him,
"If we both got out of a house that was just sprayed with banana scented spray, would..."

"Banana scented?..."

"That's besides the point, we get out of the same house smelling like banana wearing the same coloured clothes, same everything, will I still look rich?"

He shrugs as if its unescapable, I'll always 'seem' rich.

"I don't know, just something about life"

 It's unexplainable, ineffable (go word of the week.) He moves on telling me how he's sure I can tell a poor person from a mile away. I tell him I go around assuming that financial status isn't the most important thing to guess about a person. and he tells me only a person who has money would say that. Then he tells me that money is not really the first thing he thinks of.

"I meet someone and I classify them as people I would talk to and people I wouldn't. Then based on the first words they say, I decide if they are birds or fish." He tells me.

"Birds or fish?"

" Birds for someone who thinks like me, easy to like, no stress, no challenge. If I was an animal, I'd be a bird. Then there's fish, weird and un-understandable. for people who are hard to understand, people who are different, the ones who challenge how you do even the most normal things. the ones you're left wondering about after they're gone."

Tempted to ask if I was a bird or a fish, I ask instead about those guys in the middle, the ones that wouldn't classify as either a bird or a fish, what does he calls them. amphibians? Molluscs? And he looks at me like I'm threatening his perfect algorithm.

"I've never met one in the middle."

I ask him about the girl he liked last. He tells me how they met at a shop near his house. He was in his rattiest oldest clothes and she was looking like she'd just stepped off a fashion show (His words, not mine.) Chubby cheeks with dimples that went in for miles, he was star struck and he asked to walk her home from the shops. She gave one look at his clothes and face, considering him with glinting eyes, giving him pressure by not answering at once. Probably making him sweat it out on purpose, and said yes.

Their first date was at lunar park. He saved for two weeks. And this is how he knew she was worth it, they went on the banana ride (or swinging pendulum of horror) and she screamed in  delight and raised her hands when the banana boat went upside down.

" I knew from that moment that if we were married, she would kill all the spiders in the house." He shivers after saying this and I realize he has a fear of spiders. Which I don't mention.

"How does the story end, do I smell a happy ending?" I ask seeing my stop coming closer.

" Well, she thought I was too needy, and she broke up with me after a year."

He sighs, and I stand to get to the front of the bus and he stands too. we're apparently getting off at the same place. Not knowing what to say in the face of such a statement, I smile and ask him if he moved on. He shrugs, the shrug of shoulders that want to save him from answering the question.

He waves and walks away as the bus moves on and I'm left gathering my bearings. I promptly realize I'm lost and as I look around for somewhere to get away from the sun and ask for directions, I ask me, if I met me, would I be a bird or fish?
See yáll next week.





Photo by Mugoya Mokua.