There have been two times in my life where I've heard someone say an absolutely perfect thing.
Two times that I can think of where someone has said something, I have been present, and I'm like, that was perfect.
Now, I grew up in northern New Jersey.
More specifically, I grew up in a town called West Orange.
More specifically than that, I grew up in a neighborhood called Down the Hill.
It was the tough part of town.
I want to be clear, I am not claiming that I am tough.
I know that I look like a grown-up version of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
But I did take the Down the Hill boys bus to get home.
This was the bus with all the guys from the wrong side of the tracks in my hometown.
Now, as you can imagine, crazy things happen on this bus every day.
One day, I get on the bus, and I'm immediately hit with a whole bunch of ice cubes.
I dive into a seat, I turn around, I realize a few guys have gone to a supermarket.
And they went in that.
And I'm in the cooler where you get the big five-pound bags of ice, that freezer, you know, if you've got to fill a cooler at a cookout.
And every time someone new gets on the bus, they're just whipping ice out.
So, man, I've been hit.
But very quickly, I'm like, all right, who's the next son of a *?
You know, like, it was really fun.
We're picking up ice, we're throwing it at each other, we're screaming, we're yelling.
The driver is on the bus the entire time.
He does not do a thing about this.
He eventually just starts driving like none of this chaos is unfolding directly.
And the bus is just right behind him.
And when we get off school grounds, a very interesting thing happens.
It goes from all of us on the bus being in an ice fight against one another,
to everybody on that bus teaming up in an ice fight against the entire town of West Orange, New Jersey.
Every window on that bus comes down.
Every car that comes by, ice.
Every storefront window, ice.
It's like, oh, you think you're jogging.
.
Today, miss, you're fleeing ice.
That's what you're actually doing.
And eventually, we had a red light next to a bus stop.
Bus stop has one of those glass shelter things with a bench inside, bunch of people sitting there.
And as you can imagine, it's just a tidal wave of ice goes at this thing.
And everybody on the bench, they did what we would all do.
They stand up, they go on the other side of the glass thing, so the ice hits that.
They wait for the light to change, so we go away.
They all do that, except for one guy.
He was a guy.
He was a little bit older, probably early 60s.
He was wearing a very nice suit, and he just stood up and stared us down.
Ice hit him in the legs.
He didn't care.
Chest, he didn't blink.
And then one piece flew through the sky and bounced off his head, and he shook.
And when he looked up, something was different.
You could feel it.
Light turns green.
We pull away.
We go back to throwing ice at each other.
.
We get out of the car.
The car is business as usual until I hear somebody in the back of the bus shout the words,
that man, he's chasing us.
And we all turn around to see that, not even on the sidewalks, on the yellow line.
So a man is running after our bus.
Now, we erupted in cheers.
We loved that we had caused this.
We were 16-year-old boys.
One kid took a whole bag of ice and shook it out the window, hoping to create, like,
a Home Alone-style booby trap to get the guy.
The guy dodged all of it, man.
He had footwork.
Now, we were in a moving vehicle.
He was an older man, so we could outpace him.
So we'd go over a hill and be like, cool, we lost him.
Then we'd hit a red light, and over the horizon, here he comes.
The guy would not quit.
He catches up to the bus at a light.
He's going, open it.
You open it right now.
Driver ignores him.
He wants no part of this.
Old man doesn't miss a beat.
He goes, , and opens the bus door with his
hands, which we did not know was possible.
So he's breathing heavy.
He's been running for a while, but it's clear that he is about to speak.
And he proceeds to say one of the two perfect things I have ever heard.
What he said was, , which one of you
wants to get off this bus and fight me like a man?
And we were all like, did not see that coming.
We started laughing and cheering.
We loved it.
He didn't care.
Louder, he goes, which one of you wants to get off this bus
and fight me like a man?
And then we went silent, because we're like, ugh.
Ugh.
This question is not hypothetical.
So now we're looking around like, well, is somebody going to?
Like, does somebody want to?
And right then, this kid Dave stands up.
And he says the second perfect thing I have ever heard, which
was, dad, please get off the bus.