My Bus Stop Experience

I arrive early at the the Hunter Plaza bus stop on the corner of 1st and Burnett, two blocks from work. I called ahead and asked customer service whether there was an actual bus stop with a sign nearby because I didn’t want to try flagging down the bus outside the office building and be left in the dust with no time to spare before my flight.

This particular corner is busy. The dozen or so people standing within a hundred feet or so don’t seem to be waiting for the bus, and as far as I can tell they aren’t waiting for anything or anybody. A woman stops her car on the street, not at a stop sign, and not at the curb, but just right there in her lane, and she gets out and shouts at somebody, and I wonder if guns are going to be drawn and if I’ll be able to duck behind the corner of the building directly behind me, but she’s just calling out to somebody and I have no idea why. They talk for a bit while two cars go around her to the right, and other bystanders don’t think this is strange at all, and a couple minutes later a car heading in the opposite direction in the west-bound lane stops, the passenger gets out with his grocery bags, and jaywalks to the other side, not that that matters, and the driver carries on with somebody and this just seems to be the way things are done here.

I want to fit in, I really do, because after all I am riding the city bus and I don’t want to stand out as the lone business guy carrying a laptop and an E-pass hanging from a lanyard around my neck as if to flaunt that I can ride anywhere, anytime on any bus, trolley or train. So I tuck the badge of honor into my shirt and just stand there trying to remember what time exactly the bus comes to this stop.

I think about my dad again, and whether he would hang out on this side of town, and if these might have been his people, and then my mind drifts off to thoughts about how this skyline must have changed in the seven or so years since he lived here.

I take out my voice recorder which I haven’t used since taking notes on the walk to work a couple mornings ago, and hit play to make sure I’m not going to erase anything once I begin dictating, and it sounds like the chipmunks, so I wonder how that happened if I haven’t changed the batteries and shouldn’t it sound slower, not faster? And then I give up.

The bus approaches and only three passengers board, including me, and I greet the driver and he seems surprised. He must have an interesting clientele during his workday, and I imagine how he occupies himself and what he must look forward to, and whether this job is just getting him by until his ship comes in.