Author: Nic Olson

I am intimidated by people that are younger and greater than me. Or the same age. My elders do not intimidate me, they’ve had more time, but it is by the younger that I am frightened. Not threatened, but struck. Their confidence and sociability and stability contrasts so deeply with the uncertainty and introversion and shakiness that defines myself. It causes my being to cower and shrink as it instinctively compares itself to a being of control and coolness. I wonder if these attributes can be shared. Is ‘cool’ a transferable commodity? Is it contagious, like if someone cooler than me spit in my mouth, would I come down with a bout of streptocooloccus? If someone spits in my face with the intention of insult, do I become cooler from the act of humiliation? Making out with someone that is cooler than you are makes you look cooler, but once the swapping of saliva is done, have you actually risen in excellence? Is it hereditary, passed on through strands of DNA?

California and Mexico have a large number of exceptional people. Whether it is the higher population that makes it seem like excellence abounds, or whether the culture here breeds outstanding people, or whether a regimen of tacos, beaches and marijuana is the recipe for excellence, there is a certain distinction that characterizes people I’ve recently met.

Other people’s abilities rub off on you. The negatives more than the positives. The alcoholisms and the curse words are usually first. The dietary habits are often second. Good hygiene and real ambition often comes last, if at all. Product of the environment, or a variation of the monkey-see-monkey-do playground psychology, but habits and actions are transferable with time and exposure. If I spent enough time with young professionals, taking in the ambition and success, I would naturally shed my bushman appearance and talk about how to earn figures. If I spent time with the dealers in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, I would naturally learn the names of the drugs that they shout out at me when I walk down street. But is excellence, more than just knowledge or ambition, is the ‘cool’ transferable?

I am proof that it is not. Exposure to excellence has simply inhibited my ability to respect it. Being around selflessness has only given me the shame of my growing selfishness. Being around the ‘cool’ my entire life has done nothing but open my eyes to what cool is and how I do not qualify. Even if I spend the rest of my life in California, I will never reach ‘cool’.

I have warmed up to that idea.

The Greyhound Class. The newest division of people that the Canadian Federal Government will soon recognize as its own income group. Slightly above the poverty line, but below the air travel line, these often inbred travellers use nothing besides the glorious Greyhound, because they mostly have no choice. Harmonicas in the back seat, machetes in the front seat, and a handful of aggravated grandmothers in between.

I spent my last two hours in America planning Mexico and stealing internet from a McDonalds in downtown Houston, and I arrived in America to do the same, this time at a Burger King in El Paso. When in Rome, hang out in the worst possible eateries that exist in the world. Or so the saying goes. I best not mingle too far above my tax bracket, especially when I plan to dive right back into the mire of the Greyhound Class in a few short hours.

The buses in Mexico rival first class airlines in Canada. The only thing I didn’t get, at least not courtesy of the bus line, was an ass massage. Free Spanish lessons, free tour guides, cheap burritos delivered directly to your seat, five hour border delays. The world could use two Mexicos, and zero Americas, I recently decided. For the bus travel alone.

So I have made the switch from first class bus travel with free bootlegged movie showings, to join the newest level of poverty, The Greyhound Class, and I have committed to two months of their disgruntled assistance. The Discovery Pass. Five-hundred and fifty dollars worth of unlimited Greyhound glory, well into the month of September.

In 2012, the Harper Government will provide their only tax cut for the poor, specifically for those who traveled more than 200 hours on the Greyhound in a span of six months. They call it, the ‘Smells Like A Can Of Gasoline Tax Cut’ which you can find on line 116 on your income tax return form. No receipt is necessary as proof, simply a grungy t-shirt, balled up and placed in a plastic bag, mailed to 24 Sussex Drive.