Cranky commuter: Hormonal edition

I could have walked to the Metro from my office last night. I probably should have. But even though that's under two miles, I decided to save my energy (I don't have much left these days), so that I could fix enchiladas for dinner when I got home and then could go walking with Brian.

I should have started walking when I waited for the bus for 20 minutes and none came. But by then I'd waited 20 minutes, so one had to be coming soon. Right? Well, only if you count 25 minutes after that as soon.

I should have waited for the next bus when I saw how crowded the first one is. They usually come in packs when they're that far apart, so there was probably another not too far behind. But I couldn't see one coming, so I boarded the crowded one. I wasn't too offended when no one offered me a seat. I wish they would, especially on the bus where I feel less stable than on the train, but it's not the end of the world to have to stand. I'm just confused because people were offering me a seat when I was 5 months pregnant and I thought one might just think I had a bit of belly pudge. Now I'm quickly approaching my due date, and it's rare that I'm offered a seat. A seat on the bus did finally open up near me part way down Wisconsin Avenue and I grabbed it.

I started wishing I had walked (I would have been there so much faster!) as traffic crept along and the bus remained jammed full. A man who I would judge to be about in his 40s ended up standing near me as the bus made its way down M Street. He was casually dressed and carrying a heavy leather bag, sort of a cross between a brief case and a duffel bag, if that makes any sense, slung over his shoulder. I moved my head out of his way as he came by so it wouldn't hit me, just as I had avoided a college student's backpack earlier in the ride. But this man stopped right by me, and I had to keep my head out of the way. Not that that helped. As the man swayed with the turns of the bus, his bag kept hitting me in the shoulder. I tried to move out of the way, but unless I wanted to sit on the lap of the man beside me, I didn't have many options.

"Excuse me!" I finally exclaimed when the man turned for some reason and his bag hit me sharply in the ear. "Could you please be careful with your bag?"

"It's a crowded bus, lady. What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know. When I'm on a crowded bus with a big bag I usually hold it it's handle so it's down towards the floor, not whacking other passengers in the head."

"You wouldn't be having the problem if you would be respectful and give up your seat to someone older than you," he told me.

I thought about ignoring him, but I was cranky and annoyed. Plus, traffic was moving slowly enough with the lights approaching Washington Circle that I knew I could make it to the Metro faster than the bus by walking. So I stood up.

The man with the bag promptly sat down as a woman across the aisle protested that I was pregnant and shouldn't give up my seat.

"Ain't my problem," the man said. "Ain't my fault." The woman protested again and began to offer me her seat, but I shook my head and told her I was getting off soon, as the man muttered something about "Bitches always gettin' pregnant, wantin' special attention for it."

I got off the bus and walked toward the Metro feeling angry and overwhelmed, and wondering how much of it was just hormones. It was 7 pm and I had left work at 5:45, which was ridiculous, and I was exhausted. Nine minutes until the next train, I saw, once I was down on the platform. I sat down on a empty bench to wait, thinking that at least it was late enough that the train wouldn't be too crowded.

There were a few open seats on the car that I boarded. I was at the front of the car, and turned toward the very front of it, where I saw two open seats. A woman ahead of me took one. When I got to the other, I saw that the man sitting next to it had his bag there.

"Excuse me," I said, quietly, the way you do when you need someone to move their bag a little so you can sit down.

He just looked at me. "There are open seats over there," he said after a moment, nodding toward the center of the car. He was right, and as the train pulled out of the station, I turned and went to take one of them.

***

I don't know why people are suddenly so rude. Perhaps it's the stress of the holiday season? I am used to a certain amount of indifference among commuters here, but yesterday seemed exceptional. It was a relief to get on my last bus home, with the driver that a classmate and I nicknamed "Speedy" four years ago, because we knew if we didn't make it onto his bus at Braddock Road by 8:40 PM, we weren't going to make that bus at all because he is always so prompt and will drive faster than seems smart in order to stay on schedule. The bus driver smiled when he greeted me. When I sat down, a neighbor whose name I don't know asked me how I was feeling these days. Another man got on the bus, handing over his transfer and then putting two dollars in the fare box. When Speedy stopped him to ask him what he was doing, the man explained that in the past couple of weeks drivers had let him ride a few times when he didn't have the 35 cents with him to pay the transfer fare, so he was just trying to make up for that. It only took a few little things to improve my mood and make me start thinking that the Metrobus and Metro parts of my commute had been almost funny.

I think I’m going to move this site to hereswhathappenedonmywaytoworktoday.blogspot.com, because really, that’s all I ever have stories about.

I got on the bus outside the Spanish embassy this morning. As I swiped my SmarTrip card, I realize that there was a man at the driver’s window and a little black Mercedes parked just in front of the bus with the door open.

“You cut me off. You almost hit me,” the man at the window was saying. “Do you know who I am?”

I moved back into the bus and settled myself at a window on the left side so I could watch what was happening. I could no longer see the driver, but I could keep an eye on the man. The bus driver at first apologized to the man, offering some sort of explanation about not seeing the car and needing to move over.

The man at the bus window, a white man with grey hair and glasses, wearing a dark suit, continued to berate the driver and threatened to call his supervisor. The bus driver lost his apologetic tone, and asked the man to move his car so that he could continue his route. The angry driver repeated his threat.

“Call my supervisor. Here’s the number. Here’s my name.” It’s actually not the first time I’ve seen a bus driver offer this information to someone who was harassing him. The last time it happened, the bus driver then ordered the angry passenger off the bus, on a route where the buses ran only every hour. I had been glad to see the woman gone, as she had been terribly rude to the bus driver—something I think should be a crime, since I depend on these folks to get me around town.

“Don’t think I won’t,” the man said, grabbing a slip of paper away from the driver. “Do you know who you just cut off?”

“An asshole in a fancy car,” the bus driver replied. “You’ve yelled at me, you have the information, now get in your car and get out of my way.”

Without another word, the man went back to his car. I wish I could have figured out who he was, since he clearly thought he ought to be recognized. It would have been awesome to post his name on the internet.

Minnesota is so ghetto

For the past two and a half weeks, the bus I take after work from my office to the Metro has been full of teenage ballerinas, here for a summer program with the Washington Ballet. They are very thin, usually wearing shorts and t-shirts over pink tights, with their hair up in buns. For the most part, they are less obnoxious than most groups of teens on the bus.

The dancers come from around the country, and I’ve found their conversations amusing to overhear. I heard one talking about Kansas, and one day a girl who was obviously from New Jersey was teasing a girl from Atlanta about her accent. Last Friday, most were trying to reach their parents by cell phone in an attempt to get permission slips faxed to Washington so that they could attend a Harry Potter midnight release party.

It took willpower to not giggle out loud at the conversation I overheard today. One ballerina sat reading a magazine, and another girl came up and asked her what the article she was reading was about.

“Something about Prairie Home Companion.”

“Prairie Homecoming?”

“No, Prairie Home Companion. The radio show.”

“Oh. On the radio here.”

“No, Minnesota, I think.”

“Oh….Ghetto!”

Don't talk to strangers

In the first few months after I moved to Washington, I noticed that strangers didn’t talk to me on the Metro the way they did on BART. Other Californians in my graduate program also noted that people were less friendly with strangers on the East Coast. I don’t think of myself as someone who talks to strangers. I rarely strike up a conversation with someone I don’t know—I’m too much of an introvert. But when someone speaks to me, I nearly always answer. Usually it’s a tourist who needs directions. Occasionally, someone will ask me about the book I’m reading. I will commiserate about the weather when a stranger offers to share his umbrella at the bus stop on an unexpectedly wet day. And these superficial conversations with strangers don’t make me uncomfortable.

There has been a man on my bus in the evenings, who has decided to initiate conversations with me. Something about him made me uncomfortable the first time, a few weeks ago, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. I was sitting near the front of the bus, talking with Marvin, the driver. When we pulled out of the Pentagon, I opened my book.

“Excuse me? Miss?” I was totally engrossed in my book, and it took me awhile to realize I was the one being addressed. I looked up. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

I looked at the man. I had noticed him when I first boarded the bus. He had been talking on the cell phone in a loud, slightly twangy voice. He was sitting near the front of the bus, and I had wished he would go to the back to finish his conversation. And now, he was sitting not too far from me, wanting to know if he could ask a personal question.

I glanced at Marvin. I could tell he was listening.

“Okay,” I said, not totally comfortable with it, but not feeling that I could say no. Besides, if the man was out of line, I knew Marvin would make him get off the bus.

“How many pages have you read?”

I was relieved. It seemed like a silly question, but it wasn't exactly personal. I looked down at my book, checking the page number. I don’t usually use a bookmark, choosing instead to note the page that I’m on, so I knew how many pages I’d read since I’d left work, how many I’d read on the Metro, how many I’d read on the bus from the Pentagon.

“Of this book?”

“Just since you’ve been on this bus.”

“Um, eighteen.”

“In what? Four minutes? Are you some kind of speed reader?”

“I—no. It’s a good book.” [Actually, it was a great book, and if you haven’t read The Kite Runner, you need to. Now.]

He apologized for bothering me. We exited the freeway, and I got off a few stops later.

I didn’t think about him again, until I was waiting for the bus earlier this week. Brian and I had ended up on the same train coming home, and I was talking to him when the same man interrupted me to ask the time. I answered him, and turned back to Brian.

“Now is that really the time? You aren’t one of these people who sets your watch 5 minute ahead or something?”

“No,” I told him. He, Brian, and I had a brief conversation about people who set clocks ahead. Then the bus came, and Brian and I spent the ride home talking with a woman who lives in our building. When we got home, and I mentioned that the man was the same one who had asked me about the book, he agreed that something about the man made you think he was weird.

Yesterday it happened again. I had noticed the stranger in line behind me for the bus. I settled down to read, and tried not to notice the man when he sat down across the aisle from me. Marvin wasn’t driving, and I was not up front near the driver.

“Excuse me, miss?” The bus was moving off of the freeway, merging onto the traffic circle. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

I didn’t want to say yes, but I wasn’t sure why. His last personal question had been harmless. But I felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know him. I didn’t know the man who had offered to share his umbrella with me while we waited for the Metro bus outside the Spanish embassy a few weeks back. But I had taken him up on his offer, and over the course of a few bus rides we had gotten to know each other. His name is Miles, and his wife had a baby girl back in December. He’s not a stranger anymore, but he started out that way. Why did this feel different?

I didn’t say yes. I just looked at him, waiting.

“Have you ever considered growing your hair longer?”

I turned away from him, looking straight ahead. I noticed that the woman in front of me had stopped reading. I didn’t know her name, but I’d smiled at her in greeting as I got on the bus, as we use the same bus stop and we have spoken casually before. I could tell she was listening. I wished Marvin was driving.

I didn’t know what to say. It was a personal question, and while I couldn’t say exactly why I didn’t like that he had asked me, I was certainly uncomfortable. I considered not saying anything.

“I’m not going to talk with you about my hair,” I told him at last, not looking at him, as the woman in front of me pulled the cord to request the next stop.

The man apologized, and I rose to follow the woman whose name I didn’t know but who was not a stranger off of the bus.

We had gotten off one stop before ours, and walked up the hill together. She told me that I had been right to not simply ignore the man, but to be direct with him. She had requested the stop, thinking it would be a good idea to just get away from that man. She turned to walk down her street as I walked up the stairs in front of my building. Next time I see her at the bus stop, I will ask her name.