Yesterday I once again took the transit bus home from work.
I stood by the back door until a man got off leaving an open spot beside the step that leads up to the back of the bus, next to a woman in a white jacket.
I promptly sat beside her, happily rejoicing in the fact that I didn’t have to stand the entire ride.
The rejoicing was premature.
Let me explain the situation.
I was on the right side of the bus next to white-jacket-woman. The step down to the normal level of the bus was directly beside me which meant that once I decided to get up and leave, I’d have to remember that it was an immediate step down.
The last time I occupied such a seat, I completely forgot about this damn step and had I not been gripping the post, would have tumbled to my death. By ‘death’ I obviously mean I’d have been severely embarrassed, and would have ended up on my face with a bus load of people doing their best not to break out into hysterical giggles over my predicament.
Instead, because I’m a ninja, I simply swung down to the next level and to the door as if I had taken a series of steamy pole dancing classes in my past life. Let me tell you, it was impressive! I then walked out the door all calmly like ‘yeah-I-totally-meant-to-do-that’.
I’m sure it is still talked about in hushed tones of awe to this day.
Well this time I made sure to focus on the damn stairs as I was unsure if my ninja skills would once again save my life. I preferred not to risk it.
At the next stop a man got on the bus, walked to the back, behind me and to my left, and immediately made a phone call.
Now listen…I totally understand if you have to quickly make a call to sort out something important or whatever, but honestly, nobody else in the frigging bus needs or wants to hear your half hour long conversation. This is what the texting feature is for. Bus rides are for silent contemplation and ignoring each other.
We are already forced to press intimately against random strangers, which is highly uncomfortable to some…not me, I enjoy that…kidding…and have people bodily slam against us when the damn bus driver decides he has seizure-leg or maybe he’s just bored and wants to see how many people he can topple at once, who knows. I’m sure they probably make cash bets about this sort of thing at the beginning of each day.
Anyway, we do NOT need to listen to how much of an idiot that guy who thought he just got fired (but really didn’t) is. And we certainly don’t need to listen to you fake-laugh for thirty freaking minutes straight!
IT’S JUST NOT NECESSARY!!!
Not only that, but white-jacket-woman next to me kept fidgeting so I kept tensing up, ready at a moment’s notice to get up so she could get off the bus.
She never did.
DON’T FIDGET WHEN YOU’RE ON A BUS DAMN IT! COMMON SENSE PEOPLE, COMMON SENSE!
By the end of the bus ride I had tensed and released so many times my entire cardio session for the week had been completed and my butt muscles had gotten a serious work-out.
So anyway, annoy-the-sh*t-out-of-me man called this person on his cell and started laughing right away at whatever she was saying.
I know it was a woman because of the hints that I caught when listening to his not so quiet conversation.
He had the same fake’ish laugh that was repeated over and over and OVER!!!!
Seriously you don’t even understand.
I lost count at 27 times. Just the same laugh over and over with a random word or two interjected spontaneously every now and then “hahaha haha ha”, “hahaha haha ha”, “hahaha haha ha”, “No kidding”, “hahaha haha ha”.
OH……MY……GOD!!!
With each ‘ha’ I got angrier and angrier.
Now those of you who really know me know that I don’t anger easily. It actually really takes a LOT to get me going now that I’ve found my Zen-like inner self.
Don’t get me wrong, I used to have a SERIOUS temper when I was a young kid, but I’ve worked on myself for many, many years now, and am a far happier and much more positive person. Life is so much more peaceful this way.
BUT IN ONE FREAKING BUS RIDE THIS DAMN MAN WAS THREATENING TO UNDO YEARS OF HARD WORK!!!
The woman on the other line was obviously a famous comedian because the man couldn’t stop fake-laughing for the life of him.
I momentarily wondered how many other people were ready to strangle annoying-laugh man and if someone would suddenly yell “Shut the fu$k up laughing guy, the rest of us are trying to ignore each other!”
Then I wondered if it would lead to a huge bus fight where laughing guy would be all ‘I-can-laugh-if-I-want-to’ and other guy would be like “Uh you can’t if I punch your face in!” and then laughing guy would be like “hahaha haha ha!” and other guy would be like *PUNCH*, and then white-jacket-woman would get blood all over her white jacket and I’d be like “This is exactly why I wear a black jacket duh, and quit fidgeting damn it!”
Now, you would think this is all there was to the bus ride, but noooooo.
Suddenly laughing guy got up and I thought, “Oh thank God he’s leaving.”
He moves over and the guy sitting next to him gets off the bus.
He then moves over even more and sits DIRECTLY…BEHIND…ME!
I almost died of pissed-off-ness.
White-jacket-woman fidgeted again but this time I didn’t tense because I was so focused on NOT spinning around and glaring at laughing guy because I actually really hate confrontation.
I did look down at the stairs again for the tenth time though, just to remind myself it was there in case I got so pissed off that I found it necessary to stomp calmly away. It wouldn’t have had the desired effect if I got up in a huff and immediately fell on my face.
So now that laughing guy was practically breathing in my ear hole, I could listen very clearly to him laugh himself into certain murderous situations.
White-jacket-woman was DEFINITELY going to get blood on her jacket at this distance…especially if she kept fidgeting.
My Zen was quickly departing and I was doing everything possible to grasp onto it with everything I had left.
I checked the stairs again.
I tensed my butt as white-jacket-woman fidgeted again.
Suddenly, laughing guy sounded incredulous and no word of a lie, said “Well fu$k my hat!”
You have no idea how very close I was to dissolving into a heap of angry, hysterical giggles as I wondered exactly how one would go about fu$king laughing guys hat. This giggle inducing thought was compounded when I turned slightly and glanced at laughing guy out of the corner of my eye.
The frustrating man wasn’t even wearing a hat, so the visual image that had conjured was completely ruined!
Now what on earth was phone person to fu$k exactly, if not his hat?
The woman beside me, however, didn’t understand the hilarity of the comment, probably because she hadn’t yet seen laughing guy’s hat-less head, and was apparently completely offended by the f-word because within five seconds she actually stood up.
Now I have to admit that I did continue to sit there a moment just to decide if she was actually serious that time. It could have just been a huge fidget, you never know. I would have looked really silly standing beside her ready to move if she just calmly sat down again.
It would have been like a mini ‘wave’ with just her and I being the participants. Maybe it would have even caught on and the rest of the bus zombies would have continued the wave and it would have gone on indefinitely.
I didn’t think I could handle that.
I also hadn’t stood yet because I was trying to decide if she would find it humorous if I also pretended to get up about twenty times like she did to me.
With laughing guy going again behind me, the step threatening my life, and white-jacket-woman glaring down at me, I decided the best thing to do would be to use the opportunity to sneakily move to another seat before I went all crazy-insane-woman on laughing man.
I got up, CAREFULLY stepped down the one terrifying stair, and promptly sat in the seat facing the back door.
It turned out that white-jacket was pretending all along because she went nowhere near the back door to get off the bus. Nope, she moved further along to the back of the bus away from laughing-guy and took a seat again.
Suddenly, I realized that I had been unknowingly thrown into a very awkward situation. I was now one of those bus people who randomly got up and change seats as if finding something offensive about the person I was next to.
I mean…I actually did…but…
This meant that people suddenly noticed me. My seat-move wouldn’t have even registered to them if stupid white-jacket-woman had just gotten off the damn bus like she was supposed to!
Damn you white-jacket-woman!
And damn you laughing man!
Now every single person in the entire bus was looking right at me and shaking their heads
…or so it felt anyway.
And to make things worse…after going through all that ‘people are noticing me now’ trauma…laughing man just KEPT. ON. LAUGHING!!!
It was as if he was so caught up in his comedian woman’s hilarity that he absolutely didn’t even notice that two people just ran screaming from his annoyingness.
I shrunk against the plastic-like wall separating the back stair passengers from the front ones and turned a most unpleasant shade of red, wishing furiously that my stop would hurry the hell up.
It finally came, and upon rising from my chair still sporting a very bright color and knowing that EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the damn bus was still staring at me, I managed to somehow get tangled in the strap of my bag and almost trip my way head first out of the bus.
I have now sworn off busses for life…or at least until next week, whichever comes first.