My hypotheses may not hold up in California

My friend told me about her bus ride home today. An older guy with a fake Jamaican accent was fighting with his girlfriend and declared to the entire bus: "I bring you fruit and you throw it down the stairs!"

She said it was quite the dramatic production. She was convinced it was fake. And that got me thinking about something I haven't considered in a while: The Social Experiment.

I'm a big fan of seeing how people react in situations where the unexpected happens. Or when they're forced to be uncomfortable by proximity. I've traveled across a continent to visit someone for 11 hours just to see how they would react.

One of my favorite ideas was going to lunch in front of the courthouse where everyone (read: judges, lawyers, the real suits) eats when it's nice out. I would show up in my business casual uniform with my lunch, strip down to a bikini and sunbathe on the fountain bench. I wanted to get my photog friend there to document the event, but even she was uncomfortable with the idea.

I guess I haven't really considered doing a social experiment in a while. Probably because the last three months of my life have been a giant one on myself. But now that I'm a little more familiar with my surroundings, it might be time to start brainstorming.

The thing is, people in Minnesota are different than people in California. (Insert "Duh!" here.) So how do I come up with new ideas? And I can't very well experiment on my coworkers or roommate. That would be downright unethical! So where do I start? Perhaps the transit station.

We experience minor earthquakes every day

May 6, 2008 - Tuesday

No Country for Old Men is a tough book to read. You can cut the tension with a knife. And sometimes I get lost in the dialogue. So when the guy next to me on the bus decided to turn on his speaker phone to jam out to some awful pop/hip-hop song (and if I say it's bad, it must be terrible), I got a little irritated.

Normally in a situation like this I would sigh to myself, pull out my iPod and turn it up as loud as I could to try to drown it all out. But today was different. I turned to him and asked, "Could you turn that down please?" After asking me to repeat myself in a threatening manner he said "It's a free f*ucking country. Go back to reading your book." I started to tell him to stop being so rude when a few other passengers joined my side and the driver told him to turn it off. Sweet!

I've started looking at things I have been doing a little differently. I'm asking more questions, whether it be for a raise at work or directions on a new bus. I remember my dad saying more than once that my generation has a problem with that. We'll just sit back and wait to find out rather than ask. It's been true for me. What a waste of time and worry!

Asking for help is essential when waiting tables. While training I used to stress the importance of this on every shift. Why haven't I applied this in broader strokes?

With these and other small revelations happening almost every day, I wonder why I have spent so much time contemplating something that is hundreds of days (and perhaps hundreds of epiphanies) away. So my next big move is to consider things that are more immediate and let more seismic, albeit simple, events happen within my faults.