Every now and then a bus ride may take an unexpected turn. Or perhaps all bus rides do. Sometimes there’s a conversational hum. You think the bus is full of chattering friends, look around, and everyone’s sitting alone, cell phones pressed to ears.
Sometimes people are actually talking, over the sounds of the street, to visible companions. Strangers meet, discover they’ve both spent time in jail, and a long and fascinating discussion ensues. Too bad I didn’t take notes.
Then there’s the incident I witnessed last week. A large black woman in a wheel chair rolled onto the bus, which meant that a pudgy man, grey beard and baseball cap, had to move out of the handicapped section. Nothing unusual. If you sit at the front of the bus, you have to be ready to give up your seat.
When we got to Wisconsin Avenue, the woman rolled her chair towards the door, and the man popped back instantaneously into his original seat, right opposite me. He muttered something I missed, made a gesture I didn’t see, and the woman lost her cool, really lost it. She suddenly backed her chair to where it had been, and screamed and swore at the man. He had a nasty reply for everything she aimed at him, replies I’d never quote in a blog. Finally she howled, “I’m gonna slap you across the face!”
“You do that, and I’ll press charges.”
What had I missed, what had he said and done?
“Tell that man there what you did,” and she pointed to another onlooker. “Would you do that to your mother? You can’t treat me like that, this isn’t 1864. I’m not a slave, I’m a person, I’m a human being!”
Some of the other passengers snickered; I felt like crying.
“I’m not getting off, I’m staying right here.” Ah hah, then the man would have to change his seat again.
The volley continued, hatred batted back and forth, as I sat unobserved inches from the fray. “There’s nothing wrong with you, you don’t even need that wheelchair.”
“You don’t know what I have, you m... f....!”
The bus driver got up and left, and returned a few minutes later with a transit official.
“This man has problems,” said the onlooker, who seemed to be a regular rider. After a short discussion, the official escorted the beard-belly-baseball cap off the bus. The bus driver wanted to help the woman in the wheelchair off.
“I’m not getting off here and have that guy harass me!”
“Don’t worry, he’s not coming near you,” and she finally got off at her stop.
“So is the show over?” asked a passenger.
It wasn’t over for the actors in the show, and it wasn’t over for me.
