Adventures In Bus-Riding

How many people have ever used public transportation (i.e. the bus) raise your hands? Great! Now, out of those of you who have ridden the bus, how many of you does it scare the crap out of? (Raise your hands again!)Fabulous! Then we feel the same way! My car is broken. Again! I'm not going to get into all of the stinky details about what happened to me last night on my way home from work when my car stalled right in the busiest intersection of town smack in the middle of rush hour and I had to walk up and down a strip mall for an hour and a half between calling my mom multiple times on King Soopers pay phone and going back to check on my car to make sure it didn't get totalled while sitting right in the entrance to a very busy super-market. And then I had to wait until I hoped someone showed up to pick me up and figure out what was going to happen to my car. I'm not going to get into all those details. I'll just cut to the part where I had to turn a typically four hour work day into an eight hour hassle of mammoth proportions because of (dum dum dum....) Riding the bus to work and back!

Around a year and a half ago, I had to ride the bus on a regular basis because of another broken down car that was way too expensive and not worth it to fix. I got used to it then. Now? Not so much. I would do just fine thankyouverymuch, if I never had to ride the bus again.

Why must buses....

• be so utterly stinka-rific and odor-romic. Shouldn't there be some kind of "code of bus ethics" that state before getting on the bus you must own a shower and know how to use one on a regular basis (or at least own a stick of deodorant), and have changed your socks within the last 3 days.
• attract such "scary" people. I am not judgemental. I'm really not. But in one day, I saw enough body piercings, tattoos, trench-coat mafia, piercing glanced, foul-mouthed teenagers to last a lifetime. They don't necessarily scare me as in "Crap! They're gonna steal my purse." More like, "Crap. I have teenagers coming up in a few short years!" Hey, teenager! I really don't care to hear about that doobie you smoked last night or whether it was "kind bud", "Schwag" or the in-between variety. No really. I'm not even interested in hearing about that new imported beer you tried. Can someone please show me a bus with sound-proofed, enclosed seats? Or at least play some music on the bus? I'll even take musak! Anything, PLEASE! I just wanna get home!
• make people think that just because you're riding the bus, too, that there's some "secret code of bus riders" that allows (particularly the male species) to think that all females are fair game. No, I wasn't riding with my husband. But I guess that guy who felt the need to sit on the bench with me while waiting for the bus confused my averted eyes and extreme interest in looking at my shoes for a "Yeah. I want to be ogled and stared at for the next fifteen minutes. Go ahead and hit on me" signal. Even completely ignoring his patting the seat next to me and giving me the, "You come here to me" look didn't dissuade him. The fifteen minute ride from college town to my town was quite pleasant as I felt his eyes on the back of my head the entire ride.
• have such unbelievably uncomfortable and ugly seats! I mean, if people are going to be spending a large majority of their time in these horrific contraptions, the least they could do is spend the extra dime to make it more comfortable. Or at least pretty. Hire a bus interior decorator, for cryin' out loud. Bright blue seats with purple and pink upholstery does not a pleasant bus ride make.

I would sooner walk than take that thing again. My girls, who had the priveledge of riding with me on the way up to work found a great adventure out of the whole thing. Maybe I should try to look at it through the eyes of a four and a two year old. NAH! I just need my car back.

**To donate to the "Save Kristen's Car and Sanity" relief fund, contact me via email. Paypal is accepted.**