Shut the hell up, Ned
Ned was feeling good today. He had the best joke ever for the bus guy. He loved the bus guy, and he loved riding the bus, and most of all he loved any opportunity he could get to show how much he knew about the 20th-century psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. He walked up to the bus stop, excited to try out this new joke that he’d been working on until like 2 a.m.
The bus pulled up: butterflies. He was so nervous, but so excited to give this one a shot. He knew that everyone would immediately love him and also think he’s really cool when they realized he reads a lot.
He stepped onto the bus.
“Student ID, please,” said the bus driver, who hadn’t looked to see who was getting on his bus. The bus driver turned to see Ned and braced himself for what was about to happen.
“Well, I…”
“No. Shut the hell up,” the bus driver said, cutting Ned off before he could be an asshole and burden everyone with some dumb joke that like 1 percent of people would actually get.
“But—”
“No, dude. No one wants to hear it. Seriously. It’s like 9 a.m. People are trying to just get to class. We’re all STEM majors, anyway.”
Ned was defeated. He would definitely write some poetry or a song about this later. They’d all regret it once he dropped an indie classic. He sat down.
“Guess I’ll just have to prepare a Kant joke for tomorrow,” he thought to himself.
Written by: Aaron Levins — adlevins@ucdavis.edu
(This article is humor and/or satire, and its content is purely fictional. The story and the names of “sources” are fictionalized.)
