"Want one?" asks Brian, the tenacious 5 year old standing, duck-dynasty backpack laden- next to his quietly smiling mother at the bus stop. He offers me a chip.
"Can I have some water?" he asks when he discovers the bottle hanging off a caribeaner on my backpack. His mother nods, and I try to teach him how a caribeaner works to get the bottle off.
"How old are you?" he asks accusingly.
"How old do you think I am, I answer predictably.
"I don't know" he return squeakily. Then marks out my height with 8 inch intervals of his hand, counting them off.
"one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine... You're NINE years old?!" he half asks, half declares.

On the bus to Tilamook Brian apologizes needlessly to the bus driver for eating chips on the bus. In the back a drawling roadworn pilgrim named John calls out "Yeah, you BETTER stop eating on the bus, or else we gonna THROW you off at da next STOP."
Brian glares at him through the seat divisions, finally cracking under a few more teases.
"No!" he yells, "And if you say that one more time, I'll throw YOU off the bus."
"Oh meen, I'M sorry. I didn't mean nothin by it. I'm just jokin but I'll stop now. Don't throw ME off the bus."
"Well I'm not joiking either" Brian continues, "Go ahead and see what happens!"
This was escalating nicely! Unfortunately the altercation was interupted when a former street kid from LA got on the bus next to John and noticed the tree schulptures John was making from copper wire as he travelled.
"That's really cool" comments LA Streets. "I;'ve seen this kind of stuff before. You're really good at it." LA Streets pauses, "Can you make scorpions"

In a small town enroute a girl gets on the bus, no more than 40, she is by far the most attractive person on the bus now. She moves to sit beside LA Streets. I'm sorry, you can't sit there" Streets flirts unsuccessfully. An awkward exchange later Streets realizes that his city charm and humour has failed him.
"I was just kidding" He surrenders.
"you can sit here."
They proceed to chat. John gets talking to me again. Brian is pacified by chips he managed to hustle off another bus-rider.
And the road goes on.