A Hilariously Strange Nashville Encounter

Hello friends,
There are many memorable events and sights and people that have been worth noting and that I will cherish and share as life long memories on this trip. One such absurd experience happened this afternoon during our arrival in Nashville!
Around 3pm, Our Knoxville-bound Megabus pulls to the side of the road and lets all the Nashville-bound passengers pour out of the bus onto the hot sidewalk. As a piano and hiking backpack ridden Alexa and I stand next to a public transportation bus sign amid a dozen or so luggage burdened passengers who dismounted the bus we meet this individual. Peppering this crowd waiting for their rides, are several passengers who have taken the short break as an opportunity to stretch and smoke cigarettes.
One such individual, a young black girl, probably in her mid twenties,dressed in nothing gender specific, approaches us unselfconsciously. She points to the toy piano and asks a question that Alexa and I find ridiculous yet many people seem to ask it, "Hey can you play that thing?"
What makes this inquiry unique to the others is this:
HER VOICE IS EXACTLY MIKE TYSON'S VOICE.
This is not an exaggeration, it is irrefutably Mike Tyson's precise pitch and lisp, Evander would shudder just the same!
After Alexa sweetly replies "yes", the obligatory second question comes "Can you play me something?". Alexa is always a good sport about this and she has never denied a request as long as it was physically possible or the time allowed. She agreed as long as this girl would hold the piano up, she obliges and Alexa plays a little tune.
Not twenty seconds in this girl unapologetically exclaims,
"I'm not gon' lie that sounds like suicide music... You not gon' kill nobody is ya?"
We laugh and reply "no, of course not!", ignoring completely the rudeness or absurdity of the statement and that if it was indeed the suicide music she dubbed it then the only body Alexa would kill is herself. This is all morbid subject matter but fear not! It brightens, it gets better folks.
Our friend then starts to ask "So can you.." Then interrupts herself saying "that guy over there, the light skinned one" she points to a guy who looks like a more gritty Drake with a short Afro equipped with a pick peering out of it like a cockeyed periscope in a black wife beater and covered in tattoos including the familiar females name in script on his neck. "He wants to know if..."
At this point she looks at me then looks at Alexa and, seemingly decided she needed the answer to this before she could ask her original question, so she asks about me,
"Is this yo Daddy?"
At this point Alexa and I felt as though we were in the middle of a practical joke or some peculiar shared dream. We both laughed and denied that, although surprised it was even a real question at all!
"Oh is this yo man, you with him?"
Again, no, and no....we get onto the big question.
"That piano... Can you play that with yo booty?"
Between her Tyson impediment and southern drawl, clearly we heard her wrong...
"What?"
"How could these white kids be so stupid?" Her face seems to ask, so she repeats herself more clearly,pointing to the piano.
"CAN YOU PLAY THAT WITH YO BOOTY?"
Alexa and I stare at each other incredulous, laugh self consciously, and she says "Well no one has ever asked that, and I don't think so! *laughs* I've never tried!"
"On okay, I's just askin', he wanted to know... Yeah that's that suicide music, you ain't gonna kill no one is ya?"
She turns to me and says "I don't mean to make fun, but you look like you'd kill someone"
To which I laugh and say "Yeah we don't usually talk about it, but Alexa plays the music and I twist my mustache and tie women to railroad tracks"
Our friend says "Aww yeahh I can take a video and out it up on YouTube, we can be famous!"
Alarmed at both our fantasy crime operation and the sheer oddity of a human being we are experiencing Alexa and I say "Oh well we try to keep our crimes on the down low ya know? So we don't get in trouble!"
Our joke is either too complex or abstract or uninteresting for our company and an awkward silence blankets this triangle for a moment, then she get close to Alexa remarking
"aw your hair is so long and pretty, can I touch it?"
Bewildered, and not a little unnerved, Alexa backs up subtly and then says uneasily, "umm,I've never had that request before...sure I guess"
"Aw I didn't mean to make ya feel awkward" although she immediately pounces on the timid permission to touch her hair.
"It's so shiny and nice", she observes in her Mike Tyson admiring voice.
She looks over and I clear my throat and finally speak to her "Hello" I say.
"Hi...aw I'm not gonna hurt y'all I'm just askin I'm just being friendly, yall are together?"
"No, just traveling friends" I make clear for the second time in this five minute candid camera event that dragged on comedically for what felt like much longer.
"Aw then you single?" She asks Alexa, eyeing her up and down. "And you gettin off here?" She looks past us at her Afro quaffed friend as he enters the bus. "I was hoping you'd play that on the bus."
We smile and shrug, outwardly sorry we could change our plans to play suicide music on toy pianos with our booties for Drake look-a-likes and Tyson sound-a-likes to the entertainment and chagrin of the rest of the passengers headed to Knoxville. She says goodbye to us and get back on the bus.
Alexa and I just burst out laughing and texting our friends and our jaws are dropped as we mouth "What the fuck just happened!?"
Then, as if to punctuate the gloriously insane absurdity of our first experience in Nashville forever printed in my brain, a bird perched on a telephone pole starts to call incessantly that sounds exactly like a karate master saying "Hi-Yahhh!".
Welcome to Nashville.
-AllOne





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