A Love Song to the Los Angeles Metro Bus
Forty-nine more stops and then I will be where I am going.
But for right now, I am sitting behind an old man with a limp in his step, dressed in a red and white and black checkered shirt.
I am next to a lady adorned in pink from head to toe, who is giggling at texts in Spanish. Jajaja.
I am squished between the wall and a Korean woman with a broken arm and her feisty friends and their rolling carts filled with plastic bags filled with fermented food in jars.
I am four stops away from the street where you live and that I never went to because I made the wrong choice more than once.
We stop and someone with a blue cap and an untucked shirt gets on.
I know no one on this bus, yet all of us are Angelenos and all of us Angelenos have shared an experience in our city today.
We felt the same bumps in the road at the exact same time.
We were surrounded by the same conversations for five, ten, and maybe, if you’re me, fifty-two minutes.
I would never trade nor change my smile from the woman with a few silver teeth or being a witness to the kindness of a crippled old man to an even more crippled old woman, for any car ride or Uberpool that would’ve saved me half an hour getting from downtown to Beverly Glen.
And as the bus empties and we that remain do a dance to uninhabited seats, I already miss the thrill of the crowds and the shoulder to shoulder chaos of everyone on their midday errands.
Past the Farmer’s Market and Fairfax and almost there.
Small nameless shops and taquerias called, “#3” turn into $10 coffees at ironically named cafes.
But my cost to watch the whole organism of Los Angeles unfold before my eyes was only $1.75 and another wonderful, inspiring hour of my life.
