He walked down the aisle from the front of the OC Transpo bus. He had long, curly grey hair that fell around his shoulders. He had two scarves—a black and yellow one hanging down his front and a white one tied tightly around his neck.
When he got to the middle of the bus, he stopped. The bus started moving, and he grabbed onto the handrails. After a few minutes, he was talking to two teenagers whom he clearly didn’t know.
They were standing near the back exit door, and one of them started talking about art.
Talking about art! This old guy with the long, gray hair was standing there in the middle of a city bus talking to these two kids about art.
They talked about oil paint. They talked about watercolors. They talked about technique, about laying down a base layer of white. They talked about the kinds of canvases they use.
The kid doing most of the talking was particularly interested in talking about canvas.
“I got arrested,” he said. “The police caught me, and so now I do all my painting on canvas.”