Transit fatigue?
I ride the bus about three days a week, and mostly on the same route, out to work and back again. I'm on one bus for about 40 minutes, usually, and it runs along a soul-killing major arterial lined with vast parking lots, cash&carry grocery stores, bars, pawnshops, fast food, car repair places, and so on. There's some residential development, all of the cheap, windowless variety that already looks dilapidated even though it's maybe 10 years old. The people who get on and off (darting through traffic trying to catch the bus because the safe pedestrian crossings are few and far between) are poor. I think that I'm usually the richest person on the bus. Some people smell bad. One guy has Tourette's, I'm pretty sure. There are plenty of people who are silent, like me, and some whose conversations are innocuous. However, I hear and see enough that I know a lot more about the general complications of being poor than any boring, law-abiding, over-educated middle-class person like me ought to.
Things I have seen or heard lately on that bus route:
1) A man and a woman, maybe in their 40s or 50s, yelling at a very fat toddler on a leash.
2) A woman saying loudly into her phone "But I want to make it LOOK like a ROBBERY!"
3) A kid, maybe four years old, wearing the blank, impassive stare common to those of who ride transit regularly (the look you never see on kids who get on in the wealthier neighborhoods, kids who think transit is an unusual and exciting way to get to the zoo a few times a year, and who are thrilled to get on the bus), numbly stuffing her face with something out of a bag. I figured it was chips or something, but then I realized it was pre-cut apple slices.
4) An obese man wearing a tight red t-shirt, sleeping, snoring, wearing headphones, and smelling really unwashed.
5) A short and cheerful teenager and a tall bike-commuter guy and I, strangers to each other, gossiping happily about the bus drivers on our regular line. We were all delighted to see that the driver who finally pulled up was the one that Bike Commuter Guy calls "The Rocket."
I started this post yesterday planning to write about how exhausting this transit ride is getting for me. I am a transit believer, but this ride is a heart-breaking, spirit-crushing one that pushes the limits of even my appreciation. But then #5 happened to me this evening, and now I'm back on board. That kid made me laugh so hard. I really hope life doesn't crush her too much.
Things I have seen or heard lately on that bus route:
1) A man and a woman, maybe in their 40s or 50s, yelling at a very fat toddler on a leash.
2) A woman saying loudly into her phone "But I want to make it LOOK like a ROBBERY!"
3) A kid, maybe four years old, wearing the blank, impassive stare common to those of who ride transit regularly (the look you never see on kids who get on in the wealthier neighborhoods, kids who think transit is an unusual and exciting way to get to the zoo a few times a year, and who are thrilled to get on the bus), numbly stuffing her face with something out of a bag. I figured it was chips or something, but then I realized it was pre-cut apple slices.
4) An obese man wearing a tight red t-shirt, sleeping, snoring, wearing headphones, and smelling really unwashed.
5) A short and cheerful teenager and a tall bike-commuter guy and I, strangers to each other, gossiping happily about the bus drivers on our regular line. We were all delighted to see that the driver who finally pulled up was the one that Bike Commuter Guy calls "The Rocket."
I started this post yesterday planning to write about how exhausting this transit ride is getting for me. I am a transit believer, but this ride is a heart-breaking, spirit-crushing one that pushes the limits of even my appreciation. But then #5 happened to me this evening, and now I'm back on board. That kid made me laugh so hard. I really hope life doesn't crush her too much.
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