Onion Man

Commuting via the bus from Ballard to Redmond and back again every day means I get to run into my fair share of crazies usually on the Montlake to Ballard portion of my commute. Most often its some schizophrenic guy or drunk homeless guy that gets on in the U-District starts screaming or something and ends up getting kicked off the buss in Wallingford. But today was something different.

I had just missed catching my bus in front of the UW Hospital. It was going to be 20 minutes till the next bus so I sat down to read my book. After a few minutes smelled something funny. I looked around and there was only one other guy at this normally busy bus stop. He was a short stocky black guy with a mustache and mini-dreads wearing a gray addidas track suit, bright red children's sunglasses, and black velvetine Mastercard cap. He kind of looked like a weirded out Easy-E. He also had a pair of kids safety scissors and a metal can opener hung from his neck with an old shoe lace. On the bench next to him he had a couple beat up overstuffed grocery bags filled with papers, books, socks, etc. This guy looked off but from his looks he could have just be eccentric rather that really out there.

He kept turning away and I couldn't figure out what he was doing then I saw him repeatedly flinging little white things in all directions. It was onions! I had smelled onions. He was cutting up onions with his kid's scissors and can opener and flinging the chunks and slices in all directions. After doing this with 2 onions he reached into one of his bags and pulled out a spray bottle of what appeared to be some sort of Lysol cleaning product and started to spray his body with it ending by spraying his chest in the same cross gesture made during a catholic blessing. The liquid in the bottle was clear so he may have been spraying self with water rather than Lysol. For his safety I hope he was.

He repeated this process 4 or 5 times and remained oblivious to the large group of people now waiting for various buses. And then he just picked up his stuff and walked west on Pacific with out getting on any of the buses. What was he doing? My best guess was that he was protecting the bus stop from vampires. Maybe that was holy water in the spray bottle? Or he wasn't crazy and it was some weird performance art? Whatever he was doing it made my day see an Easy-E lookalike blanket the sidewalk with a dozen onions. You go, Onion Man, you go!