I go home every day with the urge to write about a number of things. The problem is, if I don’t get to it in time, the initial fervor wears off like an improperly applied anesthetic and I’m stuck with a dry, sour piece of prose from a bad date tree. (Do dates actually grow on trees? I’ll make a note to look it up after I finish here.)
I have gone home several times in the last few weeks with an urge to write about the bus system. Typical bus days, bus arguments, the cooling problem… and yet by the time I get around to it, it as inevitably been a great many hours since the last bus ride and I am already completely indifferent to the whole idea of buses and the elements included in writing about them.
So to motivate myself to write about these rare bursts of inspiration I have decided to start a series of pieces that are based solely on the transient urges of written outbursts. Starting with buses, naturally.
Every day during the fall and spring I take two buses in the morrow and two back home. Normally these are eventless and dull, but every so often you have an incident or two.
Once there was a Korean lady who forgot to pay a quarter. The driver, naturally, called her on it, and yelled “Is anybody here Asian?!”
This was so wrong I couldn’t believe it. I wonder if she would have asked if anyone was European if the lady was French.
Eventually I came to the conclusion that the job of bus driver somehow holds an appeal for the racially insensitive. Another time I heard a Chinese woman wanting to know how to get to Mountain View. (I had seen enough Chinese movies such that I could actually almost understand her… it was surreal.) The bus driver’s reply was literally “Talk English, ma’am, talk English, take an English class, you’re in America!”
While it is true that English is the language the news is in, I couldn’t believe the nerve of this guy. I mean, there are people listening there, everyone could hear him! He should go learn to “speak Asian,” it should be a new job requirement for bus drivers.
Aside from the racially insensitive drivers, it’s also easy to notice the trend of bus drivers to fall into a certain demographic. Old people… ugly women… people who invest heavily in real estate… It’s just a trend I’ve noticed. Sure enough however, there was one day when it was all shattered. I swear to God I saw this, but you’ll never believe me anyway: a hot bus driver. How the hell does that happen?
Teacher: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Unfortunate Girl: I want to go into modeling… and once that takes off I’m going into the bus driver business!
Alas, it is a sad, sad world out there. Did you know that the bus drivers in the Silicon Valley are the second-most well-paid bus drivers in the country? I forget who the first are, but they’re paid more than New York City’s bus drivers… the world is screwed up.
