Four years (last weekend marked my four year anniversary in Seattle...BTW) of annoyance by the duck boat came to a head a few weeks ago. If you're unfamiliar, the Duck Boat is a touristmobile that tours the streets of Seattle and then, in boat form, it drives into Lake Union to tour the city from the water. Sounds harmless enough...
The problem is the drivers harass the townies on a loud speaker as they go though the city. Daily, I have to hear cleverly named "captains" like Rusty Steel or Shivery Barnacles yell barbs like "nice coat" to someone with an ugly coat on or "here are some of downtown's more colorful people" as they drive past a group of drug addicts. Each zinger is followed with "boinnnnng" boner noise from a morning zoo crew-esque sound effect machine or a "quack quack" on the mic from the driver himself. When they're not verbally berating people minding their own business they're ruining people's days by blasting wedding reception songs and Sesame Street's "Rubber Ducky, You're The One"as they drive down the street.
Up until recently I had only witnessed the full on jerkery of the duck boat but had never been subjected to it myself. That was until a few weeks ago...
I felt kind of sick when I got up but it was pretty mild. When I arrived at work that day I had some pretty unpleasant lower body activity going on which led to me ultimately throwing up at about 10AM. I was still experiencing post throw-up euphoria but I could tell I needed to get out of work while the getting was good. I hopped on a bus to get home but as soon as it started moving I could tell the ride wasn't going to be pleasant. I felt sicker and sicker with each stop so I sat there with my head down, swallowing spit like R. Kelly, repeating "don't throw up on the bus, please don't throw on the bus" over and over in my head. Finely we're a street away from my stop when we hit a red light but I'm feeling confident because I knew my bathroom was within reach.
That moment of clarity was interrupted as I get the BEJESUS scared out of me by a loud noise hitting the window beside me. I look up and a duck boat captain was shooting a super soaker at me. I tried to look towards the ground and focus on getting home but the captain keeps blasting my window and I hear him say something to make fun of me over the loud speaker. It was unentellegible but I made the word "white". The whole duck boat starts laughing and honking kazoos at me when the captain starts blaring "Play That Funky Music (White Boy)" causing whole the duck boat erupt into hysterics. He bumps the boat up and down like it's on hydraulics to the music while people laughed at me for what felt like hours. Still looking down, I heard the duck turn past Niketown and sound of laughter and kazooing fade into the distance.
I made it home, which should have made me happy but all I could think about was much I wished I would have thrown up all over the window of the bus at the families of horrified duck boaters. Sadly, publicly regurgitating as a retort is only the kind of wit you think of in hindsight, so instead I laid around throwing up in the comfort of my apartment stewing about this incident.
