Idle Bus Thoughts

A collection of thoughts that floated through my mind as I rode the cheapie Chinatown-style bus to Boston recently:

"You have your ticket?" the agent standing by the curb asked me. "OK, just wait and I'll ask the driver what he wants to do, it's up to him. Just take care of the driver, OK?"

These new bus lines, Boltbus and Megabus, want you to prepay your tickets on the internet, but I was still able to use good old cash to bribe the driver directly. Thank god for cash, it preserves a certain amount of base sanity in the world by limiting the extent to which people can be centrally controlled. While it would probably significantly reduce crime by making all transactions traceable, I still shudder to think of a future world that is completely cashless. I think it's important that humans have the right to sometimes break the rules and have a reasonable chance of getting away with it, because it serves as a sort of gut-check on the sanity of the rules themselves. It would be senseless if there was a willing customer and the bus still departed with empty seats. Breaking a rule is like a "no" vote to a referendum on that rule.

When the driver arrived several people were already angry at him, and they let him know immediately. One woman was particularly impatient it seemed. I thought, "Why isn't this woman more respectful to our driver? Not only is he obviously doing the right thing by making us wait until all pre-ticketed passengers have shown up first, but there's a larger principle here... we're about to put our lives into this man's hands, there's no sense in insulting him and putting him in a bad mood! Would you bitterly insult your surgeon just before an operation? And then there's a bigger picture still, which is that even if he isn't your driver, he still is a member of your society, and it hurts us all to have abused, pissed off people walking around. Life is short and hard, lets not make it harder for each other."

I spoke up and defended our driver, not just for his sake, but mine too, since any road rage on his part would have rather adverse consequences for me as well. "He can't let us on until he knows how many pre-ticketed passengers show up. Otherwise we might be taking their seat" I said.

She just glared at me and said "What?" I repeated my sentence verbatim and she said "I was asking the driver, not you."

I said nothing but thought, "What difference does it make where your answer comes from? Unless your question is not truly a question born of inquisitiveness about the answer, but rather more of a statement or even an attack designed to shape and influence the feelings or behavior of the recipient. It's wrong to bundle an attack in the form of a question, she should be more transparent about her intentions and just tell the driver to go fuck himself, straight up."

But she shutup after our exchange, and I think the driver appreciated feeling like someone amid the discontented throngs was on his side, and I felt our chances for an accident had been reduced by my effort. But then his boss came along and spoiled it.

His boss harassed him about why he was driving at 3:00 instead of 5:00, and a bitter argument ensued over what his correct driving schedule was. The driver was restrained but insistent, while the boss was frustratingly mean. "Don't talk back to me, you know who I am? I'm your union rep!" he said.

In a Haitian accent, the driver responded "Sir, I am not talking back to you, I'm just telling you that my schedule at home says I'm supposed to drive de 3 o'clock."

"I'm gonna report you and tell them that you got an attitude and that you arguin' in front of de customuhs."

"Sir I do not have attitude, I am just telling you dat if dey gonna change de schedule, why don't dey tell me de new schedule. I always drive de 3 o'clock."

His boss radioed central command: "Yeah um, I gotta a driver here says he's driving the 3 o'clock and he's arguin in front of the customers, and he got a attitude too."

It all eventually resolved itself and the driver did get to drive, but I thought all that stress and pressure must have gotten to him, and so I made one more attempt to sway the outcome in my favor as I boarded the bus. Smiling, I said "man, today just isn't your day huh!"

"It really isn't! It really is not my day today!" he responded.

The first 20 minutes of our ride I looked for signs that he might be perturbed, but he handled the whole thing remarkably well! He guided our giant bird as smoothly and professionally as anyone, and made a friendly announcement over the intercom saying if anyone needs anything don't hesitate to ask.

As an unreserved passenger, I was one of the last to board, and people played the usual games to try to subtly dissuade me or anyone else from sitting next to them: books and clothes in the seat next to them. But one guy upped his game a notch and did something really clever and effective I thought. He simply coughed as I approached. Just once, but it was enough to keep me away! I asked another guy to move his books instead, and then the guy didn't cough for the rest of the journey (and as luck would have it, another guy sitting right behind me started coughing 5 minutes into the journey and didn't stop for the next 4 hours!). The last time I sat next to a cougher was on a plane, and I was bedridden for 2 weeks after that. I've never been so sick in all my life. It was the only time outside of my sporadic attempts at jogging when I truly felt like I might actually snuff it.

The bus was full, and I felt good that there are so many full buses these days thanks to high oil prices and free markets. So many intangible benefits to society, new relationships will be forged, less traffic, better environment, happier society. Looking at the road, I tried to visualize how much space the cars would occupy on the road if we'd all driven ourselves instead. It felt good to see all that space bundled into one little bus leaving the road free and clear. I started visually stacking all the cars from oncoming traffic too, imagining how empty the road would be if they too were in buses.

Then after the usual quick calculation on what their profit margin must look like, a typically half-nuts business idea popped into my head: "How about a social networking service based on these buses, where you coordinate over the internet which bus you'll be on, and you're paired up with another suitable person who's traveling to Boston that day too. Busdate.com. Hmm, sounds so ghetto though. OK, lousy idea."

The rest of the drive was smooth and uneventful, but traveling is always kinda fun for the kinds of thoughts it produces. Just like babies need proper external stimulae to develop their brains fully, we adults need it too to get the best output.