October 4, 2016
Rest days: Stuff homeless people say
I did the usual rest day things: try to sleep (it's official: I can no longer stay in hostels), eat, walk around, marvel at how casually everyone is dressed, dodge cyclists, check on my bicycle repeatedly (make sure your hostel has a secure area for bikes before you book). I even caught up on my journal. Look, I'm posting today's page today!
To me, the second-best part of Montreal (after all the food a large city has to offer), is the casual bilingualism here.
Most people in the service industry can switch from French to English with ease, but the university students are in another class altogether.
They can and will seamlessly switch between languages many times in the same conversation, often in the same sentence. If I could understand French better, I'd share some of the conversation I heard. It's amazing to listen to.
But instead, here's some stuff homeless people say:
Man stepping backwards off a sidewalk directly in front of an oncoming cyclist, totally oblivious, then whirling around to me (biking the other way): "Save yourself!"
Woman, to me, loudly and without emotion: "Do you have three dollars?"
Me: "No."
Woman, in same voice: "You stupid *****. You ***** *****. You ugly cow."
With barely a pause, turning to a man walking by: "Do you have three dollars? You ***** sadist. You ***** *****. You ugly prick."
Again without pause, turning to the next person: "Do you have three dollars?"
Overheard, man with francophone accent: "If somebody murders me--"
Man with anglophone accent: "The coppers back away. I saw the coppers back away before."
Francophone: "Even if we die, nobody knows."
Woman in hostel, trying to explain after telling a shocked young German she's homeless: "I'm biking around Lake Ontario for six weeks."
Homeless people sure say some crazy things.
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