Politics and Good Manners
When a passenger accidentally spilled a large cup of coffee in the aisle of the bus today many of the passengers quickly donated pages of their morning newspapers to sop up the spill. Even more interesting was to see which pages (presumably those of least individual importance to each) were sacrificed. A bit of arts & leisure, a sprinkling of sports, some advertising inserts, and a healthy representation of various presidential candidates.
Two new characters have arrived at the bus stop. I call them Big Blue and Little Blue. I assume mother and son. Their preferred color is blue. Big Blue is a large woman. She dresses in blue sweatpants, blue blouse, blue headscarf, and wears blue eyeshadow. She talks loud all the time, sometimes startling other passengers. She is usually shouting at Little Blue who likes to pretend he can’t hear her. Little Blue wears blue shorts, blue Tshirt, and blue flip flops. Today I discovered that although Big Blue speaks English, she may be unable to read it. She sometimes brings her mail to the bus stop and asks strangers to read it to her. Today we all learned that Little Blue may be in trouble at school.
When the bus driver took a sudden detour this afternoon and dumped us out on a residential street several blocks from our destination, I feared the worst. “The street is closed!”, he shouted, “you have to walk.” Not knowing any other way to get home, I started walking toward a large group of people filling the streets. “What is going on?” I thought “a shooter, a bomb threat?” I was relieved to find instead a street fair. The scariest thing at the street fair were the food vendors whose offerings looked a little ripe in the hot afternoon sun.
Major changes in the line up at the local bus stop. All of the truly interesting characters including Big Blue, Little Blue, Purple Babushka Lady, Pants Too Tight and her children Small, Medium and Large have gone missing. So has Mr and Mrs. Skinny Couple. The only constant has been Scruffy Insurance Guy who stopped talking to me when I may have nodded off for a moment in the middle of one of his stories about his dog chasing the neighbor’s cat.
OK, probably sticking my neck out here, but here goes. Every morning and every afternoon all the women at the bus stop crowd their way to the front of the line. They obviously feel entitled to board first. One or two, no problem. But twenty or thirty? The end result is that most of the men have to stand. Now I’m the most well mannered guy I know. Pregnant, elderly, disabled, children — not a problem. But some of these ladies are in better shape than me. So the question is should the lifeboat rule apply on public transportation?
