Traveling Adventures: The Wheels on the Bus

Since the metro fare hike on January 6, I've been taking alternate routes where I can to get to work. For instance, instead of taking the metro at 9:25am from Silver Spring to Gallery Place for $2.75, I now take the 8:49am 70, 71 or 79 bus from Silver Spring to Archives for $1.25. This is really about all I can do for less at the moment as there is still NO bus from the Spring to Crystal City... or rather... there is a way, but it takes 3 hours and 4 transfers and frankly that's just too many. I'll just stick with the hour long metro ride with one transfer for a butt-load of change.

Anyway, you see some interesting people riding the bus at 9am on Georgia Ave. My first day on the bus (and I'll admit, I was a little conspicuous in my white coat and light scarf) a guy got in my face and said "Hey pretty lady you gotta dolla?!" to which I replied "no," because I always reply "no."* Usually it's all about seeing interested outfit choices (ranging from pink frog pjs to purple fishnets), or child mistreatment ("Harold! Sit yo' ass back dahn, I don' curr if you gotta itch!"), or simply the wierdest person chooses YOU to sit next to. Today it was a drooler. As in he drooled and he was not a dog.

NOTE: On my way home last night not only did we have a leaking bus and a bad-braking-bus driver, but we had to pull over and stop for 3 minutes for the driver to argue with a passenger who didn't pay. The passenger said "yo', man, y'all don' make change an' all I got is a ten." The driver still told him to get off, and another passenger yelled "hey some of us gots places to be, homes," so the guy replied "hay, man you need to learn to be a little more Hu-man-it-arian." Funniest part to me was that he sounded out humanitarian. Some chick with heart shaped dangle earrings gave him $1.35 so we could continue on.

The important thing is that I get to read. I've already made it a 1/5 of the way into my new favorite and long awaited book: The Autobiography of King Henry VIII (with notes by his fool Will Somers). Ah.

Not to say that people are any less weird on the metro, but on the bus it's just a bit more noticable. I mean, just last night while I waited at the Chinatown metro station a guy literally circled me (and I know now to watch myself back and front at all times). He approached me two or three times, walked around me a few times, then finally got up the nerve to ask me if I had 80 cents. Which I, of course, did not. Also last night, Andrew and I got pushed apart so some people with large suitcases could force their way onto the train shoting "OH PRAISE JESUS!" Jesus never pushed anyone. Just saying. Also have overheard on the metro some woman telling her friend that if she didn't get out of her way at the station she would "fart on [her]." Very adult. Also, one of the best things I ever wrote for my playwriting class last year started from overhearing a REALLY stupid convo on the metro between 3 tittering teenagers. Mostly about their boyfriends and their weight. A$ can back me up on this.

Basically, public transportation yeilds the best people-watching. No, I don't always feel safe, but I sometimes get a laugh.

*Please note: I am not an awful person. I have been shown that it actually never helps to pass on the quarters. I gave change to a guy on the metro once. Two months later I said no and he called me a "stuck up bitch." He obviously didn't appreciate it. I give away my granola bars when I have them, and usually pass dollars to those women with the "I just moved here with my husband and son and we have no money and I don't speak English" polaroids, but transit begging just doesn't encourage me to throw my change away.

I'll end this with a quote from Daniel Tosh (to the best of my memory).

"Once I got a pair of those cargo pants, you know, with all the pockets. But my dad always told me never to waste space! So I can't wear them. So I would start a jar of change labelled 'Cargo Pants Change.' I would wait and wait and drop in my pennies and nickels until that jar was full. And then I'd celebrate. Because it's Cargo Pants Day. So I'd fill my pockets with that change, right? And I'd buy one of those car alarms and carry it close to my chest until that first homeless guy asks 'got any change?' [thump, whooo whooo] you have WON muthaeffer! And I start ripping change our of my pockets and throwing it at them and it hurts but he doesn't care, because he WON."