Buses

I've been meaning to write this post for a while.

So where I go is kind of (sometimes) interesting, but how I get there is generally vaguely unpleasant for some reason or another. You know buses. You know the kind of people who ride buses and wait for buses. However, I still have two stories.

First, some backstory. I ride two buses to work every day (unless I choose to walk the first leg, which I do if I miss a bus, it's a nice day, or I'm feeling really adventurous or fat). The first bus is almost always quite nice, mostly because it's not marketed as a bus.

It's a historic trolley.

Yeah, you're jealous. Anyway, this bus is full of college students and business suit-wearing people who scroll through their iPods, comb their hair, and otherwise sit very quietly away from each other.

The second bus I ride is an actual bus, and this is where anything interesting happens. All of my stories involve this bus.

Story #1

I boarded a bus in the morning as a usually do and sat somewhere towards the middle, as I usually do. I watched as the masses of people boarded after me, including a woman balancing two books on her head while wearing headphones and sunglasses. She sat directly in front of me. The bus was pretty crowded, and we started off, at which point the man behind me started to have a conversation on his cell phone.

To be fair to the woman, he was very loud and he had a habit of cussing every other word. Everybody else in the bus just ignored it, but the woman, never turning around, said in a very clear voice, "I have my headphones turned all the way up, and I can still hear you talking, sir. It's Ave Maria, and I've got the Bible on my head. Stop talking on your cell phone."

And the man behind stopped talking for about half a second before saying to the person on the other end of the phone, "This crazy lady just told me to shut up." And then he continued his conversation.

So the woman in front of me took the Bible off her head and slammed it down on the floor. She repeated, "I've got the Bible, now stop talking you Devil man." I'm not kidding, that's what she called him.

So he started laughing or something and she finally reached over - as in reached over MY seat - and straight up almost hit him with a Bible.

I'm not totally sure, but I feel like that's not what bibles are for.

At this point the bus driver took notice and started to call back to this woman. The cell-phone-talking man was actually starting to get a little freaked out now, because the woman had stood up and started to ascend the two steps up. She just sort of stood there, looming in the aisle. The bus driver was still calling back, but one can imagine that over Ave Maria, perhaps she really couldn't hear anything.

Long story short, they had to get a cop to escort her off the bus. The man continued his cell phone conversation.

Story #2

I would like to preface this story by saying that it is totally true and not exaggerated. The foods mentioned are completely accurate.

I was going to a business meeting with a person from another organization (!) and I was waiting for the bus at about 1 pm in the afternoon. A girl with a very young child - maybe 2 - were standing at the bus stop, as was an older man eating cheetos. I took my spot somewhat away from both parties. The man then began to approach me. He tried to offer me his cheetos, which I declined (twice). He may have tried to talk, but it was difficult for me to make out. Eventually he wondered over to the mother and her child and tried to offer them cheetos. The girl - probably younger than me - was talking on her cell phone and tried to ignore the man, so he started trying to poke the 2-year old with this bag of cheetos. When the child didn't respond, the man pulled out a bottle of vodka from his bag and drank the last of it. Thank God he didn't offer that to the child.

This was really only the beginning of the man's generosity though. He started to pull out more things from his bag to offer to the child. He pulled out bologna. He pulled bacon. Raw bacon. Eventually it became clear the no one would take anything from him, so he wondered out to the side of the church that stood behind us and peed. Peed in a churchyard. In broad daylight. Visible from the sidewalk, not even in a bush or anything.

By this time, the bus had finally arrived. I boarded and the man boarded directly behind me and didn't pay for his ticket. The bus was completely packed and about 5 minutes late, and so the bus driver wasn't having it. After the man mumbled that he was homeless several times, some woman in the front paid for him, and he finally took a seat. The entire bus bubbled over with commentary about the whole thing, especially the two men behind me who were trying to decide if because God was watching all the time, did that mean you had to do good deeds all the time? And he probably could have bought a bus ticket if he hadn't bought that second bottle of vodka he was drinking on the bus, haha. (Rough transcription.)

I frankly couldn't keep my eyes off the whole thing too. It just kept going and getting worse. When the busdriver had to strap in a boarding passenger in a wheelchair, the homeless drunk man offered the busdriver bacon. (The busdriver practically kicked him off the bus right then.) Eventually, the homeless man stopped trying to offer his food to other people and just ate a plum in his seat before appearing to fall asleep.

About the same time all of this was happening, a well dressed man with a messenger bag sitting across from me handed a white pamphlet to the man sitting next to him. A few seconds later, his arm wafted - and this is exactly how I mean to describe it - in an arc towards me. Without looking at me at all, he handed me a pink brochure with a lamb on it and a bunch of quotes about hearing voices that are really God. I didn't really know what to do with it so I just held it. Later I got a look at the other pamphlet, the dainty pink one, which turned out to be titled, "Hell: the Destiny of Sinners."


So I know you have bus stories, too - care to share?