The Wheels of the Bus Go Round and Round

I came home yesterday after work, and I was not so tired that I passed out on the couch immediately upon entering the door. I would say that is an accomplishment. Theresa (one of the short list of people that emails me through the journal) said it would happen. It�s not that I didn�t believe her; I think I was just too weary to decide one way or the other. She also said to give my kids a call after they get home from school, and that worked quite well too. It wasn�t until yesterday that I didn�t feel like making a personal phone call was the equivalent of smoking in the bathroom in high school, not that I would know about smoking the bathroom in high school, since it wasn�t until after high school that I ever tried a cigarette. I tend to think of my short-lived smoking stint as a series of trying it out. Daily. For about a year. But anyway, work yesterday did not drain me. I even had to ride the bus.

Mondays are my bus days, which isn�t all that bad now that I know what the hell bus I�m transferring to when I get downtown. I was very nervous that first day I rode the bus last week. I felt like a child when he handed me a bus ticket and told me when to catch the bus at the corner, when to pay and get a transfer, and where to get off. He helped me figure out what busses I could catch to Oakland from downtown and what busses to catch to go home from downtown since our local bus stops running before I get off work. I got to work and home just fine.

You have to realize that I have only ridden the bus once in my adult life, and I was with him that day. The one and only time before that, I rode the bus as a teenager back in Omaha where the bus system sucks. A friend and I decided to ride the bus from our suburb into town. We had to manage a transfer that day too, but we failed to actually manage it. We got into town just fine, but when we tried to get back home and asked the driver for assistance, he assisted us by leaving us in the middle of a not-so-nice part of town, telling us the bus we needed would be there in about ten minutes. It wasn�t there in ten minutes. Or twenty. Or thirty. While waiting, we were educated in what lewd comments gangs of leering males would shout from their cars while hanging out the windows. After one car drove by for the third time, we frantically searched for a pay phone and called my mom. I was never allowed to ride the bus again. I never wanted to.

Now that I�m in a city with good bus service, I really haven�t taken to riding. Being a stay at home mom until now didn�t give me much opportunity to use the bus, especially when in a neighborhood that only offers hourly service. Most of the places I go are within a couple miles, making taking the bus more of an inconvenience, so I always drove where I needed to go. Taking the bus for shopping excursions didn�t seem all that inviting to me anyway. How does anyone buy a week�s worth of groceries for a family of four and get it home on the bus? I think the correct answer to that would be, they don�t. Smaller, more frequent shopping trips would have to be the norm, something that is not easy in the neighborhood of hourly service.

John has ridden the bus to work almost every single day since we moved here. I could count on one hand the number of times he drove. It takes even longer to drive into town than it does to ride the bus, and you can�t read a book or the newspaper when you�re driving. It made a lot of sense for him to ride.

Since I have become a working girl, riding the bus is now an option, though it�s not such an easy thing for me. I have to ride all the way into town and transfer to another bus to go back out again to where I work. It takes me almost twice as long to ride the bus to work as it does to drive. That means I have to get up earlier on bus days, and anyone who knows the least bit about me knows I don�t like getting up any earlier than I have to. Most people who have to deal with me don�t like me getting up any earlier than I have to either. I haven�t been too bad thus far, but I�m not exactly a joy to be around either. I use up all my pleasantness at work on the patients, with some using more than others. I find it no coincidence that �patients� and �patience� are homonyms.

There are still advantages to riding the bus. Besides being able to read during the commute, I don�t have to drive. I don�t mind the drive to work so much, but by the end of the day, I�m tired. Driving is not something I care to do. Then there�s the feeling that I�m doing the right thing for the environment, even if it�s not the right thing for the bank account. I could almost fill our gas tank with the cost of three days of riding the bus. It�s no wonder more people don�t use mass transit. I feel pretty good about using the bus that one time a week.

It�s a great opportunity for people-watching too. I get lots of interesting characters at work, but there are even more on the bus. Some people are simply amusing, while others are interesting in a Jerry Springer sort of way. Both provide guilty entertainment for those like me. Not all interesting people are worth experiencing though, particularly firsthand.

One ride I had to perch myself on four inches of seat while the massive woman next to me expanded herself even further by eating M&Ms. I dreamed of pointing to the No Eating sign and telling her I needed every M&M�s worth of space, but I probably only thought that because the circulation was cut off to half my body. If I weren�t so clumsy, I would have stood, but four inches of seat is a better option than risking injury to myself and all those around me by standing. I just can�t get the hang of that standing-on-the-bus thing. Makes me something interesting for others to watch.

Ms. M&Ms was certainly entitled to her seat, and her candy too while not on the bus. I would have rather not been the one to share a seat with her, but like I said, it�s better than standing. And it�s better than the Middle Easterner who very nicely said hello but then went on to have an entire conversation with me that I simply could not understand. Plus, I think he was coming on to me, and that�s terribly uncomfortable when trapped on a bus. He was persistent too, despite my attempts to ignore him by reading.

I do think it�s time we get another car. We need something small and inexpensive that won�t make me feel guilty for using gas driving into work. I�ll still take the bus sometimes. I just don�t want to have to.