Thoughts about buses

Found this assignment I wrote for school this past year. For some reason, re-reading it made me smile, thinking about how, for some people, being dependent on the "loser cruiser" to get around is a tragedy. But I don't have to pay for parking, car insurance, or a spot twenty blocks away from my house, and my electric-run bus has got nothing on the detrimental exhaust being spewn out by all those death traps idling in rush-hour traffic. As much as I love to complain about buses, they aren't all that bad. Consider...

The bus pulls up to the stop with the slow sigh of heavy brakes and a whiff of exhaust. Commuters, shaking out umbrellas, jostle to be the first onboard, not because of the January drizzle, but because there are prime seats to be had.

The doors close and the bus heaves forward into traffic. People, jammed together, their warm breath turning into condensation on the glass, turn inwards to their music, books, or newspapers, or concentrate on the ads above the windows, careful not to make eye contact.

Windows, wiped with sleeves to see up-coming stops, fog over within seconds. Those forced to stand clasp grimy metal poles or plastic loops, swaying precariously with each lurch of the bus and rubbing shoulders with grumpy commuters.

I’m sitting against the cold, draughty window on a cracked plastic seat, hot blasts of air pumping out of the vents near my legs. I plan out pieces of my day while stifling yawns, and spend six whole seconds wondering where the girl in front of me is going.

The bus smells like rubber and that wet dog smell from rained-upon toques and wool coats. Businessmen clutch briefcases in their hands or on their laps. Old women in the courtesy seats eye teenagers who either hop about boisterously, or sit and stare complacently at traffic out the window, immersed in their iPods.

The only common link between all of us is that we’re not here, with the cracked seats and dripping rubber floors, but are either absentmindedly re-visiting a moment in the past, or thinking about the world we will trudge into once we step off the bus and back into the January drizzle.