“You must be sophomores or juniors,” began a man sporting a cowboy hat and giant backpack. A sign strapped to his pack read, “Montana Old Vet.” He was speaking to a couple of girls who were sitting behind me on the bus.

“Or at least approaching the junior… approach,” he said with surprising deliberateness. One was a junior in college and the other was a recent graduate. “Congratulations.”

“The thing about life… There’s one thing you have to understand about life, and that’s the difference between the subjective and the objective.” At this point, I was expecting some mild old-man crazy, but I always get hopeful that an elder will have something real and useful to tell me. “If you understand that, you’re set.”

The girls, you could tell, were going to politely engage the man without trying to encourage him. They spoke a little while longer, and he wished them luck in their future endeavors. “The things about life,” he began again. Over the course of the conversation lecture, he would tell this “thing about life” several times. “You have to understand the difference between the subjective and the objective.”

He mentioned that he had been through the ropes “several times” over the course of his 59 years. He fought in the war, and made it clear that his three primary pursuits were fishing, beer and women. “You two are the most beautiful women I’ve ever talked to.”

“That’s very flattering.” “I don’t mean to flatter anyone.” “Do you know the difference between subjective and objective?” “Yes, I think so.” “Well?” “The objective is, like, truth, and the subjective is like, feeling.” “That’s why a professor will tell you to shut your fucking mouth. I don’t mean to insult you.” “Why don’t you tell us so we don’t get it wrong.” “God damn! Do I have to be the professor?”

He held out his pinky and began to explain that the objective was what you saw, and the subjective was what you felt, tasted, heard and smelled. “The thing about life is, it’s not a penis or a vagina, it’s you have to know the difference between the subjective and the objective.”

He told the girls about how he’d given away all of his money, and that it was important to understand the function of money and economics. When one of the girls mentioned she was going to go into law, he seemed to have a lot to say on the subject.

“You’re going to have defendants, and you gotta give the other guy hell. Are you smart enough to be a lawyer? Do you think you’re smart enough? You got to treat the judge with respect. Do you outsmart the guys?”

He talked about how he was going up to Montana to see his grandkids, and hunt and fish and tell stories. One of the girls asked that he eat some elk for her as she hadn’t had a chance in a while. “Do you hunt?”

“No, but my uncle does.” “Well, do you love him? You gonna marry him? You got to learn to hunt for yourself!”

He mentioned the war again, “I can tell you about any weapon… at the time. I once shot something from 288 yards. You know how I know? I walked there after. It took me two and a half hours.”

“What did you shoot? A deer? An elk?”

After a pause of several minutes he told her it was a Vietcong Lieutenant Colonel. “I sometimes think about this finger, about chopping it off because of it. I got to live with it. Those were my orders, and you gotta follow ‘em. I’m not saying it’s an excuse. The thing about life is…”

As far as crazy people go, pretty mild, but you never find crazy like bus-crazy.