My professor seems to be somewhat prophetic indeed. On Friday he saw a bunch of us doing nothing in the lab and somehow got into a rant about vagrants in San Fransisco. He says they put Montreal bums to shame as far as effort goes. He heard excuses such as "I'm Michael Jackson! Can I have a dollar?" and "I'm a former NBA star about to see my daughter and i have no money..."
Good old bums... Anyway, being the naive young man that I am, after a movie I was walking back to the 45 bus and got to those escalators just before you get to Cinnabon at Bonaventure. Some pathetic soul cries out, "Does anybody speak English?" And as if I had never heard of beggars before I stopped and said, "I do!" I immediately realized my mistake when the man became very upset and bellowed, "DOES ANYONE SPEAK ANY BLOODY ENGLISH????" At this point I realized he was quite drunk. He gave me a long story about how he couldn't find the train station and he was going to see... of course... his daughter... and he needed change.
What truly puzzle me is the fact that I stopped. Why did I actually think this guy was anything other than a beggar? And I realized what it was... A most insidious Jedi Bum trick indeed.... He had a British accent. He sounded classy and sophisticated even through his slurred drunken speech.... I was foiled by my own prejudice. No other accent could have made me stop and consider what was being said by this slovenly looking gentleman.
Were my professor's stories a warning of the bum in my future? Did he see this fate for me and want me to steer clear of it?
No...
*Note* If you don't know what Jedi Bums are, then you haven't been with Gregg Factor as long as you should have been? One of the first posts
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