Don't let me down.

So I come out of the mall – yes, I went to the mall in Argentina, but there was a good reason and I’ll tell you about it later—and there, stopped at a light, is a bus #152, just the bus I need.  So I knock on the door, but the guy just shakes his finger at me; turns out the stop is half a block behind.  Bad luck, right?  No.  Good luck.  Because the next bus that comes is the one I get on.  As I put my peso veinticinco into the slot, strains of music waft across the bus to my unsuspecting ears.  Actually, music might be too strong a term: a guy, probably somewhere in his thirties, is wearing a fedora, strumming a guitar, and belting out the words to While My Guitar Gently Weeps, unabashed as you please, just as if he were practicing in his own room.  Actually it’s probably more like the kind of singing most of us would be doing only if we were riding a motorcycle or mowing the lawn or doing the dishes with the disposal running the whole time.  I have to say, the words he has down pat.  I find myself singing along in my head and trying to remember the next line, and even where I fail, Juan Lennon here has them all.  But the chords come from another planet, and I don’t think it’s a planet where they play guitar.  They have nothing, nothing to do with the melody he’s yowling.  However, that doesn’t stop him from laboring over them, pausing every few bars to search for the next set of frets while he holds out whatever word he’s on.  It’s so bad I consider just asking him, “Hey man, can I give it a shot?”  out of courtesy to the rest of the people on the bus.  See, I’m sitting there thinking, “I can handle this because I’m adjustable, and he’s funny, but these crusty porteños must be pissed as all hell.  They must hate this guy.”  Finally the dude finishes his long, torturous rendition of Gently Weeps and puts his guitar back in its case, and I breath a sigh of relief that no one seems to have been hurt.  Then a lady stands up to get off the bus – 40, 50 years old – and Dude yells to her, “Hey, Divina, jou rheady to rhan?  Jou rheady to fly?”  She ignores him and moves to the door at the back of the bus, and I start to wonder if the guy might be more of a bother not singing than singing.

But I don’t have long to think about it, because right around the time we cross Avenida 9 de Julio, he gets out the old guitar again and starts playing Don’t Let Me Down.   That is, he starts singing Don’t Let Me Down – I still have no idea what he’s playing.  “Nobahhdy everr lawvmi laik she daaws . . . Uushi daaws . . . Yeshi daaws.”  It’s getting pretty good.  Then he gets to the chorus and yells out “All together now!” and I think, “Oh geez,” – but in the refrain I swear I hear other voices, improbably, mixing in with Che’s baritone honk.   I turn around and see two girls on the back of the bus, grinning like to break their faces off.  So on the next chorus I join in too, and pretty soon, I kid you not, the whole bus is smiling and singing along.  When the dude looks at me with pure grateful joy and sings “And from de fihrst tain that she rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreally dawn me,” rolling that rr for about 3 seconds, I think to myself, Yeah, this is what I came here for.

10 points for the not-so-crusty porteños.  10 points for the boys from Liverpool.  And a hundred points for that dude in a fedora, singing like his life depended upon it on the 152.