Chaos follows me

I wrote the following post last Wednesday, but wifi has been spotty lately (at home AND at Amideast) so it is just being posted now. Of course, my amusement with the stories has not yet worn off.

My last couple days have been absolutely crazy. Not because I’ve been super busy (I always am, this isn’t new), but because the strangest things have happened.

1. I was buying tickets for the tram at the dispenser yesterday. The machine wasn’t taking my 20dh bill, and suddenly the old lady standing in line behind me slid in and grabbed it. I immediately thought, well goodbye 20dh bill, but then she reached up into her skirt and gave me 20dh coins instead. So my next thought was wow, she was actually just being super nice. I bought 3 tickets (18 dh total), and just as I took the tickets from the machine, the old lady grabbed them and skittered away. I was angry and had a bad taste in my mouth and really wanted to yell “thief,” but I know that thieves get beaten up here and I didn’t really want the old lady getting beaten up. Are there age restrictions on the beatings? Who knows. Also, from afar, because she gave me coins, this could have LOOKED like an exchange, so I was basically screwed. Trust no one. Even old ladies.

2. I was walking alone (I say “alone” but this city is always bustling… I just mean that I was doing my own thing) when I stopped to let a tram go by. The plan was to let the tram pass and then walk on the tracks behind it. Easy peasy, right? I do that every day. Well, as I was waiting for the tram to go on by, a man rode his bike in front of me and turned around to harass me. It was in this moment of “hello baby” that the man, because he was being a jerk instead of paying attention to his surroundings, biked perpendicular to the tram and hit it. Neither he nor the tram were moving fast enough to cause any real damage, but watching that dumb street harasser fall off his dumb bike after hitting the tram in front of dozens of people like an idiot? Well, all I can say is that karma is real.

3. I got on a tram (wow, all of these stories are tram-related) and after one or two stops, a man and his “wife” also get on. I put that word in parentheses because they could have been twins. They had the same face. But, they were definitely pretending to be a couple (unless they actually were?? gross) because they did stupid couple-y things like hold each other’s hand, etc. But anyways, the woman was holding a bundle. The bundle had no openings for any living thing to breathe through, and frankly it was quite small for even a newborn, but the couple made a big scene about getting the mother a seat on the tram so she could rest with her dear newborn baby. An old man got up and gave his seat to this woman who couldn’t have been older than 25, and that’s when I saw a freaking PIECE OF BREAD peeking out of the bottom of the bundle!!! What a strange, strange thing for these people to do!