No4

One time on a marshrutka I was sitting in my typical uncomfortable seat. Bags in my lap, crammed up against the window, on the wheel well. Good times. I was coming back from somewhere, can't remember exactly which village, but I know it was about a two hour trip. Local people tend to pass out within 30 seconds of the engine being turned on and sleep the whole way. Personally I think its the exhaust that inevitably gets funneled into the van because it makes me light-headed and sleepy. Anyway, I can never sleep because the roads here make Louisiana's I-10 seem like the perfectly paved highway to heaven. On this trip there was a fly that kept buzzing around my head. I am reasonably patient, even with flies, but the hot, cramped conditions were making me furious. Once again my fire-starter powers were on the fritz and I couldn't make the fly die in a puff of telepathic fire. Part way on the trip back some people got off in the middle of nowhere and at the next random bus stop in the middle of nowhere we picked up some more passengers. We picked up a family who had a small Kazakh boy, maybe 5 or 6 years old. Well the fly got agitated when we stopped and he ended up buzzing around the boy. This little kid eyeballed the fly for a while. Then he stalked him with raised fist for a few more minutes. Then POW. Open-palmed the little boy destroyed the fly up against the window. Oh, if I remember this little boy was also singing very quietly in Kazakh the whole time. It was a sight to see. He flicked the fly onto the ground, wiped his hands off the head rest in front of him, and continued to stare out of the window and sing to himself. I wanted to present the kid a medal, but I settled on a stately mental congratulations.