I have two distinct bus riding modes: morning express mode & evening go home mode.
“Morning express mode” entails a combination of two or more of the following: being calm, enjoying the ride, reading a book, scoping out the lovely ladies, and sometimes listening to groovy tunes on the way.
“Evening go home mode” means grab whatever freaking express bus you see first. If you’re lucky, you get a good express bus and can repeat the morning ride experience.
God forbid you miss the last express bus and you have to take the regular bus with the proletariat & plebeians (oh wait,that would be me anyway) or crazies.
Unfortunately last week the two modes combined. Worlds Collided! and not in a good way.
I usually sit in the back row against the window in the mornings, but someone had already taken my favorite spot, so I was in the penultimate row. Almost as good, I know. I got out my book and started to read and got into my morning commute “tranquilo” mood.
It was a dreary morning, light rain, or at least very drizzly with a lot of fog in my hood, and cold too.
No more than a few stops into the commute, this one guy I see on occasion came stomping towards the back. He has that “older dorky banker/analyst but probably an accountant” look. He crashed out into the middle seat in the back row legs akimbo and panting for air because he had to run to catch the bus.
After sitting for a few minutes he realized he was hot, so he jumped out of his seat and hit that top vent in the ceiling of the bus to open up the vent-hatch with a loud ‘boom’ which got everyone’s attention in the back. Of course, taking off his tweed professor’s coat would’ve been easier, but oh well.
He was ruining the mood though with his loud panting and opening up of hatches. Besides, it was raining, so I think a lot of the passengers kept looking up waiting for water to start dripping down from the open port hole.
A few stops later, one of my favorite anonymous crushes got on the bus and walked (maybe sauntered?) towards the back and took a seat between tweedy-hatch-popper and my favorite seat in the back row. Or basically right behind me (which did me no good obviously). She was listening to her ipod and had a magazine with her and she started reading it after she settled in to her seat.
No more than two minutes later she very loudly (because of her ipod) yells “Do you like to read this magazine?!”
All of us in the back turn around to see who she’s yelling at. It was hatch-popper!
She continued, “Do you like this magazine, do you not have something else to read?!?*”
*I’m not sure what she said exactly here but it got this reply from hatch-popper: “It’ll do.”
She started mumbling under her breath in an oh-so-sexy foreign? accent and changed seats! (Good for her!) She moved up towards the middle of the bus.
Mind you everyone in the back of the bus is watching all of this now and everyone was rolling their eyes at hatch-popper.
I was very annoyed. He made my morning commute like
I now refer to hatch-popper as “morning douche bag”. He was on my bus again this morning and popped the hatch again.
Today in his rush to get out at the first stop downtown, kicked an older woman in her Achilles tendon because he wasn’t paying attention. She almost fell out of the bus and said something to him. He didn’t “get it” and said, “After you!” and waved or gestured towards the stairs that she almost fell down. She rolled her eyes and got off and went to work.
What a douche.
Bonus story– there’s actually a third mode for my bus rides- weekend and late-night rides. Sometimes the late-night ones bleed into “evening go home mode”.
Recently I caught a bus after leaving Angie’s hood and a crazy loud schizo guy called me a name.
I was sitting by the window across the aisle from said crazy, and he called me (after yelling at other people who wisely moved away) a “N-word F-word” (rhymes with chigger maggot).
He was loud too and pointed. I even looked around to see who he was yelling at, even though that I was the only one he was pointing at.
I could kind-of-maybe-sort-of give him the benefit of the doubt on the F-word, only because I got on in Angie’s hood (the ‘Stro). But the N-word? That’s a bit out there. But then again, so was he.
