It’s easy to take having a car for granted. Having the option to drive whatever you want on a moments’ notice is wonderful. But what if one day you don’t have a car anymore and have to not only figure out the bussing system, but also have to figure out how to change your entire schedule around catching the bus?
That’s what happened to me. At the beginning of January I had to start taking the bus everywhere. Luckily, I don’t go anywhere really important, but I quickly learned two things; how wrong my idea of the public transport was, and that the bus is unpredictable.
It’s a huge adjustment. Where you could have left ten minutes before something, now you have to walk to the bus stop and time it perfectly so you aren’t standing out in the cold for longer then you have to. It’s different, that is for sure.
At first when I started riding the bus, I was mortified by the things I saw. I witnessed a mother leave her small child at a stop because she was on the phone. I watched a person use a loose thread to floss their teeth. I watched a drunken woman get on the bus and try to flirt with the bus driver for a free ride- it was noon. The list could seriously go on.
Using the public transportation in your own city compared to when you’re on a vacation is completely different. When you’re on vacation, it’s almost as though taking advantage of public transportation is a treat. “We don’t have this where I’m from!” Yeah, you do, but you just prefer to never use it.
I’ll say it: I thought I was better than taking the bus and that’s why I didn’t do. I thought the bus was scummy and for poor people.
It’s harsh, but those were my thoughts up until I had to make it my own means of transportation. I doubt I’m the only one either. Now, I am very ashamed I could ever think those things. I could not have been more wrong and more of a spoiled brat.
Granted, I have seen some weird stuff while riding the bus, but the bus is almost like what an old fashion barber shoppe would be like; everyone knows of everyone but without really knowing them (if that makes sense?). Everyone who consistently rides the bus has an idea about where you work, what time you have to be there, and when you miss the bus. They know when you’re in a bad mood or a good mood. It invokes an interesting feeling when the passenger next to you makes a joke about how this bus ride is going to be better than heading to work. But while you give a chuckle, you realize this person’s joke isn’t a joke at all. It’s a humbling experience to say the least.
The bus taught me to be more humble. No one is better than anyone. We think we are, but we aren’t. Until something affects us, we don’t think about the way people view us. In a community like Kalamazoo, we as students are seen as people who come to town, trash the city, and leave with a degree. It’s understandable that people have a grudge toward us. We zip around town in expensive cars and live in over-priced apartments and couldn’t care less about the rest of the population who has to work hard to make ends meet.
While I was riding the bus super early one morning, an older woman asked me why I was riding (I assume she hasn’t seen me on this route before, but I was a seasoned pro). I, lacking anything but very dry humor that morning, said, “Because I would rather take the bus than walk to work in this crappy weather.” She smiled and looked out the bus window. A few seconds later, she asked me what I was doing in Kalamazoo, where I worked, etc.
As I shared the general details of my life with a stranger, I asked her the same type of questions. She told me she worked at Wal-Mart part-time whereas her husband works at plant somewhere north of here. He usually drops her off at work, but that day he wasn’t feeling too well.
She didn’t have to ask me about my life and I didn’t have to ask about hers. We could have just ridden to our destinations in silence with only the sound of the location-notifier to hear. Within that ten minute bus ride, I realized how both of our perceptions of each other were changed. That’s a good feeling to have shared with a random stranger.
Along with humility, I have also regained a belief in genuine kindness.
A couple of days ago I got on the bus. I was grouchy and tired, and instead of making eye contact with the other riders, I just sat there and waited to get off at my stop. Due to the little sleep I had the night before, or maybe my mind was just clouded with negativity, I had gotten on the wrong bus. Long story short, I thought I got on the West Main bus toward downtown, not toward Wal-Mart. “This is an hour of my afternoon I’m never going to get back,” I thought to myself.
As we made the rounds, I watched as people made small talk with one another. We made one stop at an apartment complex, where a man in a motorized wheel chair was looking to get on. I guessed, by watching the driver, that it’s a crazy-hard process getting a wheel chair onto a city bus; but it shouldn’t be, because public busses are equipped with mechanical ramps. This bus driver must have gotten the bus with the broken ramp, because I heard his sigh over my headphones. He pulled the pin from the ramp and dramatically threw it somewhere on his driver’s seat.
At this point I turned my headphones off because I wanted to hear what he had to say as he helped the man in the wheel chair get locked into the wheel chair area on the bus. He didn’t have much to say (probably was too tired from his dramatic performance of pulling that darn pin out).
Not only was I in a grouchy/tired mood from work, but now I was slightly angered by this bus driver and his overreaction toward helping this man get onto the bus. If you don’t like your job, so be it, but since the bus system is a small community of consistent riders, you would think he has done this before.
When the man went to get off the bus, the bus driver unlatched only the front two latches for the man (there are two more latches on the back side of the wheel chair as well). The bus driver stepped off the bus while the man went to pull away but was surprised to see he was still latched. I got up and unlatched the other two latches. As the man briefly rolled over my index finger, he said that he thanks God for people like me.
I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. It was either me to crouch down and free this man and his wheel chair, or the elderly woman next to me, who already once gave up her seat so that a young mom could sit down with her stroller.
As I sat up to indicate this was my stop, the elderly woman gave me her hand because one thing you realize when you ride the bus, some drivers slam on the breaks and it takes a moment to get your sea legs on.
A 75+ year old woman gave up her seat to someone else much younger, offered a clumsy 24 year old a stable hand, and managed to smile her way into my thoughts forever.
I’ve witnessed it all: young men giving up their seats to older people, older people passing on advice to the younger willing to listen, community members laughing at the stories they heard in church over the weekend, a man telling stories of when he was in the war, or comparing high school basketball scores; everything. I love it. I truly enjoy the interactions I’ve had thus far.
The bond among the bus patrons is something you have to witness to believe. But it’s also something you have to want to see as well. If you only want to see the negative and still hold yourself on a pedestal, then so be it, but I can assure you, you are missing out. You will be missing out on the real life sense of community formed just from riding the bus day in and day out.