Sprackers

spracker, n. 1. homeless or runaway person, characterized by the indescernable grunt-like "sprack sounds" he or she emits.
2. AVE Rat
3. one who spracks
(source Oxford English Dictionary Copyright 2007)

(Written a few weeks ago, I didn't actually go to Portland). I'm really excited about taking the train back from Portland this weekend. It is probably the thing I'm most excited about. I imagine us chugging our way through the fertile lowlands of southern Washington, with cows lowing in the lush, green pasturelands. It is so quaint and picuresque with the little stone walls instead of fences that at one point I'm convinced we're actually in the Scottish countryside, maybe drinking some Guinness and talking about how dental hygiene is for Nazis. But alas, instead hearing people with ridiculous accents that are obsessed with bad football teams (yes, I just used the word football to refer to soccer, fuck off), and a constant misting rain that penetrates everything to the core, we are just outside of Centralia, and and the misting rain is no longer as romantic, because I'm hungover as fuck and have an assload of homework ahead of me. Which probably means I A) Got hammered last night (see: coma) and B) Have no self control.
One thing is true, it will be great to get out of the U-District. This place is teeming with sprackers! There is an endless supply everywhere you look. A vast majority seem to congregate around the bus station at 45th and the AVE. The strange thing is, these people have never ridden the bus, nor do they have any intention of ever doing so. Their idea of fun seems to be: loitering near a bus stop for extremely long stretches of time, yelling at passerbyes, openly talking about drug use and/or raves, showing off their pit-bulls or equally mangy dogs, and smelling bad. Often times they will ask you for change in a way that to them seems clever but to you is just annoying. They'll say something like: "Ninjas killed my family" and hold up a cardboard sign that alludes to their lack of home and desire for "spare change." I hate these people. They are not funny, and they are not clever. They are vile.
For some reason, the one bus the sprackers DO seem to ride is the 44, which runs between the University District and Ballard. This bus is awful. I dread riding it. Every time I get on I think to myself, "OK, this will be the one time I ride this bus where there are no crazies. It's gonna happen." My fingers are clutched tightly on my U-Pass and I take a moment to quickly cross myself (I'm not Catholic).
On one particularly fine day I boarded the 44 to get to my sisters house in Ballard and, despite the haze from the previous night, moral was high, and I boarded the bus once again wondering if this would be THE day in which I rode all the way to ballard with no crazy people. I got on the bus on 15th near campus before it turns onto 45th, so I would have a better chance of getting a seat. As the bus rumbled into the stop I noted, to my despair, that it was one of the old buses. The old buses are white on the outside with an interior that consists of brown, cracked, fake leather seats. The bus on a whole is (usually) dirty and (always) smells faintly of earwax. In a nutshell, it is what Satan's lair would resemble were it turned into public transportation. Anyway, I got on the bus and much to my whimsical delight immediately noticed that my spracker radar was dead silent. Not a single BEEP. I pumped my fist to commemorate the small triumph and looked around to find a surprisingly normal, well adjusted crowd. To my left a young black girl pointed at things out the window while her mother looked on approvingly. Towards the back a girl in a scarf and wool beanie leaned forward, intently reading her novel. To my right a couple in their thirties chatted idly with Trader Joe's grocery bags on their laps. I almost said to myself aloud, "This is it, this is THE ride."
We got to the stop at 45th and the AVE across from the Neptune. My fingers were crossed. This was the make or break stop, the stop where all the crazies hang out and eventually board. Normally at this stop there are at least 4-5 sprackers, some passed out on the benches in front of Key Bank, cigarettes dangling from their mouths. People began to board. On stepped a skinny asian girl, followed by a balding fat man, but still, no sprackers.
And then they came.
My spracker radar started beeping faintly as a kid in his 20's with an abnormally baggy sweatshirt stepped onto the bus and looked around wildly. On his shirt read the letters, ICP. Insane Clown Possie. "God...save...us...", I murmered to myself. Behind him sauntered an equally dreadful soul: Jean shorts, gelled hair, and a chain reaching to his knees. My radar was now beeping healthily. I prayed to the Lord above that this would be the end of them and clutched the edge of my seat with white knuckles and sweaty palms.
But it was not the end.
On walked a girl in her late teens. She had black hair, pale skin, and a figure not unlike Jabba the Hut. She was wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt and black cargo pants. Her friend, who had multiple facial piercings, was led by a rotweiller on a leash. The bus driver looked somewhat disconcerted by the mangy animal but clearly had already felt the wrath of a spracker who had been asked to keep its pet off the bus and therefore kept his mouth shut. I prayed that they would not make it all the way to the back where I was seated but had neglected a cardinal rule in AVE rat theology: they always sit in the back. Always. They made their way closer and closer to me. At this point my spracker radar sounded more like an ambulance siren burrowing into my inner ear. I was beginning to sweat profusely. I thought they were going to pass, when, to my horror, the girl with the dog sat directly behind me. Her rottweiler, which upon a closer inspection appeared to be part pit-bull and part grizzly bear, panted directly on the back of my head, inches away from engulfing me in slobber. Then, directly next to me sat the bigger girl with the hooded sweatshirt, and across the aisles sat the guy with the chain and Insane Clown Posse sweatshirt. At this point I was terrified and fighting to stay in a rational frame of mind. The odor of spracker loomed heavily as the bus lumbered down 45th, and I several times I thought I might feint. They began to talk about raves and which member of the Insane Clown Posse was the craziest. It was horrible.
The sprackers continued with their loud, indiscernible banter as I looked at the back of the seat in front of my and tried to find a happy place. The outside world flased by through the window to my left, completely unaware of the veritable hostage situation inside our bus. Just as I began to enter a sort of meditative zone and become one with the back of the seat in front of me, I saw it. At first it was just a small flicker of movement. Nothing scary, but it caught my eye. I turned my head to the right. A tiny head poked its way out of the hood of the sweatshirt of the hefty spracker girl next to me. Then, it climbed out. A rat. A huge, white, disgusting rat. It scurried onto the sprackers shoulders exposing the length of its revolting pink tail. I let out a muffled scream and threw up slighly in my mouth. The girl had a fucking rat in the hood of her sweatshirt! A fucking rat! My brain scrambled with questions. Why the fuck did she have a rat in her sweatshirt? How was this legal? Did the rat shit in her hood?
The rest of the bus ride was spent in a dream-like state. To my rear was a dog with a jaw specifically designed for crushing human bone. To my right was a rat the size of a small cat, crawling on the shoulders of its owner, a girl that smelled like beef-jerky and weighed more than a small manatee. The remainder of the ride took 10 minutes that felt like 4 hours. I got off the bus in Ballard and watched it pull away. That was DEFINITELY not the ride.