The Preacher

Every so often, I will be forced to ride with a crazy old homeless man I have dubbed “The Preacher.” The dude’s insane, and likes people to know it. The guy looks to be about sixty, and wears a signature plaid hooded coat that looks like it was new sometime between the Mesozoic and the Cretaceous period. The guy probably won it in a poker game against a Tyrannosaurus.

Everybody on the train knows the guy. They’ve all seen him at least once before and the crowd generally seems to cringe and look away whenever he gets on.

He shuffles down the entire length of the train before choosing a car to verbally terrorize. Before he begins his lengthy rant, he stands up, supports himself by clinging white-knuckled on a vertical handrail, and takes a few warm-up breaths before the sermon.

He takes a wheezy breath, and then begins.

“The WORLD... Is about to END,” he says with great dramatic flair, pinwheeling his one free hand not clinging to the handrail frantically in the air.

His first outburst is met with silence and a few embarrassed coughs and throat-clearings.

As if he hasn’t already made his point, he surveys the passengers like they are his royal subjects, and reiterates his original point.

“PEOple. THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END! You are just SITTING there watching your LIFES ENDING.”

Not entirely true. Some people are STANDING and watching their “lifes” ending. There aren’t enough seats for everyone to be sitting watching the end of their “lifes.” Get it right, buddy.

In stilted sentences that trail off at the end, he continues.

“YOU ARE JUST REAdin’. Your NEWSPAPers. And your MAGAZines. You’re LOOKIN’. At your CELL PHONes. PreTENDIN’ not to be LISTENIN’ to ME!”

He walks up to a poor passenger trying to ignore the guy by pretending to be asleep.

The Preacher gets right in the passenger’s face. I’m sure the smell isn’t that great.

“YOU’RE Pretendin’. To Be. A-SLEEP!”

He yells A-SLEEP at the top of his lungs, and the passenger flinches, but stays “a-sleep.”

The Preacher chuckles to himself and continues.

“GOD... WILL NOT SAVE YOU. JESHUA is king. JESHUA.”

Not exactly sure who this Jeshua is. Maybe he thinks HE’S Jeshua. Excuse me, do we have a psychiatrist on this train? No? Darn.

The Preacher goes on blathering about this guy named Jeshua and the end of the world for about thirty minutes before finally exiting the train at Fruitvale station.

“The WORLD... WILL END. SOON!” He yells before stepping out of the car.

No, really buddy? You’ve only been telling us that for the last, oh, I don’t know, HALF HOUR.

He sticks his head back through the door and yells “GO OFF TO YOUR JOBS! ENJOY YOUR DAY! BUT YOU’RE ALL DOOMED!”

Thanks for that. Enjoy your day! You’re doomed! 

:-)