I Take the Bus

I take the bus. It's not a first time experience. I took the bus a lot in Bolivia. That was a novel experience...until it became normal. Normal to swivel sideways and slide my body into the scant space left on the step inside and have my back exposed to the elements because the door wouldn't close. Normal to have a seat inside but find a campesino's butt in my face and his wife's child on my lap. It was normal to not have a seat and to bend my knees or my neck in order to accomodate the short ceiling created for Asians but shipped second-hand to South America. Normal to strike up conversations with complete strangers and purchase from the merchants vending their pop, peanuts, sugar cane, bolo, and even lunch in a bag outside my window. It was normal for someone to light up a smoke in the bus or cart their small livestock into the aisle. When it was time to get off, I would yell, "Stop, please" and the driver would let me exit anywhere at anytime. All this was my bus experience once upon a lifetime in Bolivia.

These days, I board the bus for a mere 10 minutes to get to the downtown. Instead of yelling, "Stop, please!", I pull a wire and a ding lets the driver know that I need to get off at the next regulated stop. I flash my student card and go anywhere for free but not at anytime. Only at set times and with less times and less buses on holidays. On some buses, there is an automated, androgynous voice that informs me, "Next stop, SPUD-ina" (Spadina) or "Next stop, Hahn" (that merely sounds like someone exhaling). People rarely say anything to another person and almost everyone has their eyes trained to little screens with their fingers flying to send flurries of texts about topics that nobody should care about. In fact, the scope of the personal bubble spans so that some people prefer to sit their rears on the steel separation of the seats rather than have their arm touch the arm of someone else. It is a surreal and strange sensation that settles upon me as I sway my way back and forth from home, Monday to Friday every week.

Several weeks ago, after observing my fellow passengers in the terminal and on the bus, I started to think that it was all just a petri-dish of the kind of people that I will be working with as a social worker. On one of my first trips, a large young lady with really bad acne sat beside me and then turned her head to stare at me, unflinchingly, for the entire journey. Another time, a man across from me was eating those little bags of chips that you only find at Halloween. With his head tilted backward, he kept pulling the small sacs out of his bag, one after another, tearing them open, and dumping the contents into his open mouth. There are also the mumblers, the fighters, and those who should rent a room instead of take the bus.

I could continue to view these people as fields for social work, but I've come to realize that when I look at them, I am looking at me. I'm not observing specimens through a narrow, microscopic lens but rather I am seeing my reflection in a mirror. I have the same urges to stare at others or eat an entire bag of chips by myself. At home, I mutter to myself constantly and even though I don't fight or make out with others, it's not like I don't want to.

I take the bus. It's not the same as taking the bus in Bolivia, but the novelty and surrealism has turned into a solidarity with strangers that makes me see myself for who I really am. A lot like you.