Stop, hey, what's that sound

An interesting story from 2008!

So a few days ago I was on the bus on my way to work. There was a guy talking to the bus driver about his kid & summer camp & taking him there. This man was wearing a shirt & tie & was clean shaven. I was trying to figure out why he was telling the bus driver his life story & figured it was just another one of those passengers (the ones that think the bus driver is their best friend). So the man sits back in his seat which is 2 seats behind me, and the bus takes off. Almost immediately I start to hear weird noises coming from behind me & i can hear the man talking, so I just assume it was his son being wild or something. The noises continued and I started to think to myself  'what is that kid doing?' but chose to ignore it and try to mind my own business. The bus makes a stop and a lady gets on. As she sits down she recognizes the man sitting 2 seats behind me. She starts to wave hello to him but just as she is in mid-wave the smile on her face changes to horror & disgust and she covers her mouth with her hand. I can still hear the weird noises coming from behind me & now i am really starting to wonder what the hell this kid is doing! Another noise and the lady covers her mouth again and then starts digging through her purse looking for something. I decide to finally turn around to see what is going on and just as i turn around BLLLAAAAH! It's the man puking into a grocery store bag! There was no child with him! The noise was him puking the whole time, and what the lady was looking for was a kleenex to give to him!

I guess what happened was he had to drop his son off at summer camp but had the stomach flu & decided to take his chances, which were obviously not in his favour. And the reason he was talking to the bus driver was to let the driver know about his situation. So very interesting morning indeed! The next day he was on the bus again but i think he was feeling much better. No bag & no puke!

Pin Head

Hey there bobby pin head! Did u have some trouble with your hair this morning? I see an assortment of bobby pins, clips, even hair elastics in your hair! Geez i just counted about 12 pins on one side of your head, how many do you have on the other side? 1, 2, 3, 4....forget it. I'm just going to quit now and round it up to about 20. Wait, you can't get off the bus, i was just about to take a picture of your wonderful hair style! Sorry I didn't mean to stare and look like a weirdo but considering your dressed quite sharp, and you are young and pretty, i just can't get over the fuckery of your hair!

Time to get off the bus and switch over to the ferry. I think i will take a seat right in front so i can watch the ferry approach the other side of the harbour. Oh someone left the newspaper behind, I"ll skim through this while we cross over. Ten minutes later and we have reached our destination. Wait, WTF? I'm now looking at the side of the harbour we just came from. But I sat in the front facing the side we were going to. How did i go from sitting at the front of the ferry, to now sitting at the back facing the opposite direction! I didn't move! Did the ferry reverse at some point and go backwards? How did I not notice that? Wow this morning is just full of questionable things!

Muggy & Gross

It's that time of year again, a nice mix between wet & muggy and if you thought outside was bad, just wait until you step onto the bus! It's a perfect breeding ground for sweat and body odours to intensify and for some reason on these wet days there always seems to be more people on the bus, and dirtier sweaty people. I want to open a window but we are going pretty fast and it;s pouring outside so all i am going to do is drench the people sitting behind me! Sometimes you have to put manners before your own comfort; i can hold my breath.

OH GROSS! You should never ever check your shoulders for dandruff while on the bus, and NEVER brush it off onto the people behind you! This girl (?) looking extra greasy just did. Yes i am questioning the gender. I can't tell what it is sitting in the seat. Oh finally the air circulation kicked in. I can already feel the air clearing up. Eww no, don't scratch your head! Stop it! Now it looks like its snowing on the bus! God their hair looks like it hasn't been washed in a month. I understand that it probably does itch being that greasy and doing that stuff is fine in the privacy of your own home when no one is around, but come on! You are on the bus and it's flaking all over the people behind you! STOP IT!

Bus Roundup

I'm back! Sorry it's been awhile. My life has been busy and hectic, but still taking the bus. I used to think putting headphones on and reading is what it takes to block out the craziness on the bus. However over the past 2 weeks I've learned that if you have a lot on your mind and if you go into a deep thought, you barely notice what is going on around you, and the bus ride is much faster. But it is the bus, so there are some things no one can ignore. Here's a rundown of the past few weeks:

On my way home from work two girls get on the bus and sit beside me. At first they seemed normal and I thought they were regulars since one of them said hi to almost every person sitting in the front end of the bus, but after a few minutes i started to rethink that thought. They were talking and laughing so loud, and at one point it seemed like they were acting out scenes from a movie or something. One of them even had a beard! They were talking to everyone that came on the bus, even if they didn't know them, and tried to keep the conversation going, and every now and then would stare at me. It was just weird. Bearded lady scared me.

A different day a guy sat two seats down from me but the whole time he hovered & leaned towards me. I didn"t dare look at him to see what was really going on especailly since he kept hacking and sniffling. Eventually he got off the bus but when he tried to get off, he tried to open the door before the bus even came to a stop! He was trying to get the door open so fast and pushed so hard that I actually thought he was going to jump out and roll down the street. Shortly after he got off a guy on the bus sneezed so loud that the poor girl sitting in front of him jumped out of her seat and looked so frightened amd cringed as if he sneezed on the back of her neck. I couldn't help it, I laughed.

A couple got on the bus and stood in the aisle for 5 minutes arguing over who was going to sit down first. The guy waned the girl to slide into the seat and sit before him (being a gentleman) but the girl wanted him to sit first. So instead of either one of them sitting, they stood in front of the seat blocking the rest of the people coming down the aisle, and argued about who was going to take the seat first!

Besides that and the regular drunks and bag people, not much more to report. I promise to keep up with the stories this month!

It's my party and I"ll sit if I want to

A girl just got on the bus and sat down beside me. This girl is wearing one of those Dollar store Birthday hats that look like a cake with candles on it. I thought people only wore those at parties because someone is forcing them to wear it. I have never seen someone volunteer to wear one, and out in public at that! She also has three bags with her (can't describe the joy oozing out of me) and smells like mothballs and my cat's litter box. People are standing and bday girl doesn't feel the need to move any of her bags even though she is taking up 1.5 seats. I understand you are a bigger girl but if you take the bag of your back, take off the bag slung over your shoulder, I am sure we can find the other half of that seat, and just maybe you can find the birthday spirit in you to let someone sit down. She is talking to her male companion about herself, extremely loud, loud enough for everyone to hear. I have a feeling this girl is an attention seeker. Oh she took off her backpack........and picked her nose and flicked it :(

Nevermind, forget about the seat. Time for me to get off this bus.

Deja vu

Okay so once again i am on the bus, same seat as the other day, and as i am playing with my phone the lady sitting beside me starts asking about my phone. And just like the other day, she kept talking about it and telling me about her phone. She went on & on and I couldn't hear half of what she was saying! I had to do what I did the day before and just smile & nod and hope she would eventually shutup! Like the other guy, she got off at the same bus stop. It's so weird, two days in a row I sit in the same seat and the I don't get it. The next day I sat in a different seat and no one even looked at me. Hmm, I almost want to go back to the phone seat just to see if it is jinxed and if someone will talk to me about my phone. Not that i am hoping weird strangers will have a conversation with me, but i want to see if it will happen again. At least the ladies breath didn't smell like something crawled in her mouth and died!

Happy Friday!

Please, have a tic tac

Wow, it's been a week since i last posted! Sorry about the wait. Life has been busy & the bus has been boring, nothing is quite as exciting as the knife altercation. However i did have an annoying ride home yesterday.

I sat at the back of the bus because there were not many seats left. I saw a few at the back where a group of women were sitting. I think they must work together because they were all different ages but knew each other by name and one girl was doing work on her laptop. Now the girl on the laptop was one of those 'bag people', her bag and coat had a seat of their own despite the fact people were now standing. A lady got on the bus and could see no one was sitting there but as she got to the seat she realized it was reserved for a bag however she was not going to allow a bag to get a seat and for her to stand. The girl with the laptop at this point had her head down in her lap like she was trying to sleep so her friend called her name and tapped her on the leg to wake her up and tell her to move her bag. At least her friend had some manners! Laptop girl sat up looked at the lady waiting to sit down then looked at her bag and scoffed and said to her friend 'i'm about to puke any minute, what do you want me to do?" I couldn't believe it! Just because you are sick does not mean you get two seats, and i'm sure the girl was able to lift her bag down to the ground. Eventually with the help of her friend she moved her bag and the lady got to sit down, but the laptop girl just kept complaining that she was feeling sick. Another one of her friends asked if she had the flu or something and she said no she had motion sickness because she walks everywhere she goes and now she is taking the bus and couldn't handle the motion! WTF! The bus was going about 50km/hr down the road which is not fast at all! Also if you are feeling that sick maybe getting off the bus and getting fresh air is a better idea than bitching on the bus and possibly puking everywhere! Ugh, long story short, the girl made it to her bus stop without puking and got off the bus.

So she didn't puke however I almost puked after a guy sitting beside me decided to chat me up. His breath was horrible! He must be a chain smoker and a heavy coffee drinker!! It all started because i was playing with my phone to help me ignore pukey girl and he kept looking over my shoulder watching what i was doing. I could feel his eyes on me and i was trying to ignore it, like i do with everything on the bus, when he finally made a comment about my phone. He asked if it was the new Blackberry and then proceeded to ask a few questions about it. I figured okay he wants to buy one and is just wondering if it's any good, so i chatted for a bit with him about it. But when i more or less ended the conversation and turned my head back to my phone and continued palying with it, he started mumbling to me about something. We are at the back of the bus, right beside where the engine is, so i can't here a damn thing he is saying! He keeps chatting and i just keep smiling and nodding since i have no clue what we are talking about just keep hoping he will leave me alone. Nope, the rest of the bus ride he kept talking and from what i could hear it was about texting, and playing videogames and finger excercises!! Now he was just chatting me up as a friend and it had nothing to do with my phone. It's one thing to try and be polite and smile, but when his breath smells worse than horse shit, it is even harder not to offer the guy a piece of gum or a mint.

Hmm maybe it wasn't motion sickness for laptop/ bag girl. Maybe she was just getting a whiff of phone guy's breath!