Bus Rider’s Disaster Manual
How to get an exclusive user experience with this means of transportation
After multiple catastrophic experiences related to the friendly bus, I’m going out on a limb and recommending this bus rider catastrophe manual.
1. Run to catch the bus.
If what you’re looking forward to is to do a good Usain Bolt-like sprint to catch the bus and thus stun the passers-by, this situation is your chance.
Of course, you could have the catastrophe of your sprinting talent not responding to you often and leaving you stranded with the aggravating factor of feeling ridiculous in front of everyone because you know very well that they are laughing inside you. Why are they laughing? You’ve arrived at the stop with your long strides and the driver hasn’t opened the door for you and has taken off.
Old people are no longer interested in being Usain Bolt and by beating the bus with their hands, umbrellas, and newspapers they get the driver to open the door even though the bus is leaving at that moment. Why not a tribute?
2. Do NOT pretend to be normal at the bus stop
Don’t slide little by little until you reach the small and glorious space that is the bus shelter at the entrance of the bus.
And you will have the catastrophe served on a silver platter of being left out of that trench that protects you in summer from the scorching sun that leaves you with a headache and a wet shirt stuck to your back and in winter from the continuous rain that you try to avoid fighting hand to hand for space with other users.
Stand still and don’t advance while dissimulating and you’ll see how beautiful it is.
3. Be one of those smart people who pretend to be fools.
Arrive last and advance like a stealthy lynx until you conquer the head of the queue. And if you allow yourself to enter first, what can happen to you: the catastrophe of a collective lynching by those other users waiting for the bus? Bah! What’s that?
You can achieve a similar result if you lurk a few meters away from the bus stop and just when the bus doors open, walk sideways like a crab and jump in.
4. Use your invisible elbows
When the bus arrives at the bus stop and all the passengers get on the bus in a herd, it’s the perfect time to use your invisible elbows. Stick your sharp tool in their liver to force them to give way to you. Worst case scenario, what can happen to you?
Some man gets angry and punches you? Some woman gets angry and slaps you? Some grandmother gets angry and slaps you? But what’s that? Bah, that’s nothing! What else are invisible elbows for?
5. Always breathe when you pass to the back of the bus.
You have managed to get 100 people on the bus. There is a risk that if even one or a couple of people get on the bus, the bus will open at the seams, and yet the driver keeps pressing the button that says “Please go to the back” and you see that there is no more back: what the driver really means is that you should all stop breathing and squeeze yourselves together, you bunch of fat people.
Of course, don’t pay any attention to the driver’s instructions. You breathe and also try to encourage others to breathe by taking long, deep diaphragmatic breaths. In this way, you, the passengers, will prevent the driver from pushing you into the back of the bus as if you were travelling as tightly packed as sardines in a can.
The driver, with his proverbial bad temper, really wants by inciting you not to breathe for the bus to burst open at the seams so that he gets a new bus. Don’t fall into this driver’s trap. What can happen to you? That he realizes that you are a ringleader and throws you off the bus. But what’s that? Bah!
6. Your eyes to the ground or pretend to be asleep.
You come home tired from work and the bus is full as a pot of coffee, but this day you’ve hit the jackpot by finding the only free seat left. But beware! Among the many stops that the bus makes along the way, the 103-year-old lady gets on, the pregnant woman with a lump like a watermelon from Morocco, the lady with a child, and the man with a crutch.
If you look them in the eye you are lost. Look at the ground or pretend to be asleep so they won’t steal your winning lottery ticket in the form of the only free seat your butt has occupied.
7. Becoming a skunk subject
You want to be one of those few aristocratic users that when they get on the bus an exclusive area inside the bus is reserved for them alone. Okay. You’ll get that easily by becoming a skunk subject.
Then groom yourself little or not at all until your person emits a certain odor. The other users will immediately see that in front of your determined aristocracy, they will only have two possible strategies: 1. withdraw from you as much as possible because they know that inside the transport service, they do not provide gas masks. 2. practice apnea and stop breathing until they collapse and can no longer feel anything.
There is, however, a third strategy for users. Betting on the hope that you, the skunk subject and therefore the aristocratic user, will leave the bus. These rare users who decide against strategies 1 and 2 in order to put up with your aristocratic smell, usually after being infected by your smell, rarely do not also become skunk subjects. They may be individuals with a lot of aristocratic vision.
You have come to understand that the most fulfilling thing about becoming a skunk subject is leaving your aristocratic “halo” for a few stops after getting off the bus.
I’m not saying that you use this manual every day but I do recommend that you don’t take any days off.
