Busrider

I've discovered a new love in Seattle - taking the bus. This is essentially my first long-term affair with this mode of public transportation...the Chicago bus system was used only to get to Frisbee games, Target and as a last resort when no El lines ran where I needed to go. I suppose I was a long-time grade school bus rider, but the sticky humiliation of seat selection and scratchy Catholic school jumpers suppressed any pleasant memories from that era. Seattle buses are essentially the only game in town, but they make up for it by being plush, comfortable, and undeniably social. The morning bus ride experience is as expected - quiet, sleepy-hazy and diluted by book reading and music-listening. The afternoon bus ride requires patience but doles out the people-enjoying rewards in fourfold.

Yesterday, a middle-aged Latino man handed me fifty cents, one quarter, two dimes and nickel, despite the fact that I didn't ask for it, nor needed it. He seemed very pleased with his gift, so I accepted it graciously, figuring I would need it sooner or later, which happened to be today, when I realized I was a dollar bill short for my afternoon ride home. A retired doctor sat next to me one day and preceded to tell me about his old practice and why he sold it (narcolepsy, also why he rode the bus) and how he missed treating people, often for the majority of their lives. I can't even yet imagine a majority of a life.

And some days it's just the snapshots of people that stick in my mind. Yesterday it was a hipster teenage white-knuckling his iPod with his kneecaps bulging out of skinny-leg jeans. I noticed that my kneecaps didn't bulge out from my thigh, but femininely curved a bit in like a squash. I kind of envied his - they were rather fashionably unsoft. Some people just seems like striking figures...an orange-haired women reading a library copy of The Master and Margarita in Russian. A frail man of Ethiopian descent wearing a service uniform, straddling a large box wrapped clumsily in wedding wrapping paper. A 40-something wearing ridiculous Spongebob Squarepants biking gear chatting loudly with his frizzy-haired coworker about the recent Steve Carell movie while a twenty-something Microsoft employee look-a-like unabashedly slept between them. Maybe its the sense of togetherness...us in the teal-tinted bus cruising past gaggles of commuters stuck in the horrendous traffic - makes me feel connected to these people. Some of it may be that self-righteousness bus riders are entitled to here. Maybe it's just that it makes the world feel bigger, rather than the inside-box feeling you get from sitting in a sedan. Buses full of people seem to unintentionally remind me of the largeness of life.

Generally I think it's just mostly unremarkable people getting caught in a frame of my imagination, so it doesn't matter who they really are. It's simply the action of being there.

Regardless, it seems to be the perfect cure for the slight squeeze and world-shrinking effect of workplaces and common afternoon doubts and worries. I sit on the grass, wait for my bus, enjoy the afternoon sun and wait for the other people on the bus to blow my world back up to normal-sized proportions.