I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately. Not more than usual but something I’ve picked up on was that lately I only ever write when I’ve been in some weird ranting lunacy. One of my friends read Check Out and said that it had to have been the Mother Of All Rants. It was.
And then I realized that when I was studying in uni, I definitely had a way more dynamic life. I got on a bus in the morning, traveled with a whole bunch of different people, got off in the city, took a fifteen minute stroll to university and then on the way back, I reversed the procedure. I’ll tell you how that made my life dynamic.
It was the bus. With all its various people from different walks of life, though only chance encounters for me, coloured my life with stories that I will never forget. I took the same bus almost everyday for three years and it was rarely an uneventful experience. The fact that my bus route was shared by that of a mental institute only aided my dramatic flair.
On this bus I once thought I heard a man talking busily on his cell phone until I got off the bus and realized that he wasn’t on the phone, he was busily entertaining his own reflection in the mirror.
I met Tarzan (I swear that’s his name!) on the Bus, a 2L Coke guzzling hunkering Hagrid type character who was convinced that my name was Jane and that I looked just like his wife.
I met a guy while waiting for the bus who opened the conversation by asking me who I was listening to on my iPod (it was John Mayer) and then we proceeded to have the most amazing conversation – this guy was so well versed with classical music and had an obvious passion for it but had dropped out of school too early. Pity, the only thing was, he was a skittish type – very fidgety and nervous and I figured he really needed to be somewhere and the bus was running late. He later apologized by saying that that’s how he gets when he’s high on pot. True story, I had never met anyone genuinely high before and who looked like he was positive he was about to be sprung on by someone from Cops.
My first year in university, I found myself seated next to a young adult who had some mental retardation of some sort, but he was all smiles and I had no qualms about sitting next to him. Halfway through the journey, he asked me loudly if I wanted to scratch his hand – as I turned to look at him quite sure someone would soon yell out Candid Camera, he proudly opened up his palm and grinned at me. The guy wasn’t kidding and I didn’t want to come off like some weird bigot so I obligingly scratched his palm. He was happy for a bit and the bus people went back to their magazines or whatever until he beamed at me again and asked me if I would scratch his tummy. I stared at him in shock and he came closer and proceeded to lift his t-shirt when I firmly squealed, No, and ran to the front of the bus, uncaring of the stares people were giving me because they thought I was accosting him.
Once I thought I was getting robbed at the bus stop because this drunk guy came up to me, stretched out his hand and yelled for a “fecking fiver”. It took me three tries and a near heart failure before I figured out he was asking for a high five, not five dollars.
I met Jared Edgar on the Bus…well that’s the name my friend and I gave him, long story short - the boy was a blonde, long skinny legged bundle of hot. He was young though, probably a freshie when I was a senior, sigh, such a pedophile I have become but JE became the highlight of my every week in that final year when all the semesters blend together and there is nothing left to live for but a possible discount of Heaven chocolates at Coles. He would be on the 8.27 every Tuesday, wearing a signature red sweater and some kind of furry thongs, even on the coldest day. I would stare at him as discretely as possible but got caught a couple of times, something I don’t regret now although at the time would quite gladly have accepted any offer of cyanide to ease the humiliation.
There was also this guy who was your garden variety transit demon aka Konichiwa which was how he once addressed my Chinese friends. He would ride every trip our bus route ever made and when he was in the mood, he would verbally accost the passengers as he saw fit. He had a bowl-shaped haircut and wore a black leather jacket on every bus ride regardless of the weather; we seldom saw him without it, come to think of it, I rarely saw him sweat. I did however once witness him make an autistic girl cry on the bus because he kept making fun of the way she drank from her water bottle. True story, the guy was evil.
We later found out that Transit Demon lived at the mental hospital near our bus route and got release passes out on particular days, which was when we would see him at his best transit behavior.
So really, the bus made up a huge part of my life – now I just get in the car, get out, spend the whole day in the lab with mice (who are hardly dynamic though to their credit excellent animal models) and walk back to my car and back to my family. No Harry Potter crazies or eloquent junkies to brighten my day. Here when I take the bus, I just shudder continuously simply because it’s been ingrained in young women everywhere that every man who looks at you sideways means you some kind of harm. And I’ve heard stories that have convinced me that not all of them are well-intentioned enough for you to falsely accuse me of being paranoid.
But I digress. The main point of this post is that I miss that clunky old bus that was always on time with its most interesting mix of people. And maybe, just maybe, Jared Edgar is reading this riiiight now and looking down at his furry Aussie flag thongs, thinking, no way!
Have a great weekend everybody!
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