My Life Changing Experience on the Bus

MY TRUE STORY ABOUT A LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE ON THE BUS:
HOW BUS ETIQUETTE CAN DETERMINE YOUR FUTURE


A couple of years ago I was on a very crowded bus during rush hour, and most of the passengers were forced to stand.  It was the most overcrowded bus in the history of overcrowded busses, and the route was a long one.  Some people were pushed back beyond the forbidden Yellow Line, while others sheltered their young in fear.  It was so packed that you couldn’t even tell what was going on.  Somewhere on that bus I’m sure at least one child was born, and another couple were probably conceived.  It was so stuffed there were people hanging out of the windows and sitting on the roof and shit, India style.  Whatever windows hadn’t been opened for people to sit out of had been broken by the sheer pressure of compacted human flesh.  The bus surely must have lost its box-like form, and from the outside probably looked like a long tube or giant can of beer.  

So many cultures were on that bus that by the end of the trip we had witnessed the birth, peak popularity, decline, and later resurgence of an entirely new genre of music we affectionately named Busbeatz.  But the voyage wasn’t a pleasant one, and the music of our people couldn’t overcome the bleak nature of the ride.  Food rations were soon running scarce, and nightfall was fast approaching.  The tight conditions on the bus had driven some to madness, and I heard reports from the front that the driver was showing signs of delirium, perhaps as he dreamed of a day when he could just drive a damn bus without a teacher and four students sitting in his lap.  

This long and physically compacted journey forced a kind of intimacy amongst us, and we became more than just passengers.  We were a COMMUNITY, and once that kid climbed in through the window with his aquarium we became an ecosystem.  It was a surreal experience for all of us, as all of us were in physical contact with at least 14 other people at all times.  Inter-bus communication was essential, because sometimes a person on Level II (on the shoulders of the Floor-Standers and Seat Sitters of Level I) would need something from a person on Level III, which was crammed up against the ceiling.  At some point - around Lombard Avenue, I believe - we collectively ascended into one telepathic organism of commuters, all sharing the same misery and the same goal:  to make it home before scurvy set in, or at least beat the upcoming terror of Downtown Transfer Season.  

I swear I was about to reach my own personal mass transit madness when I saw HIM.  

The lone man touching nobody.  Polluting our collected misery and destroying the unified sense that we were sardine survivalist comrades at once made equals by the cruel forces of space and bus tickets.  That solitary motherfucker, sitting in the aisle row with an empty seat next to him by the window.  Amidst the stressful chaos of trampled groceries and tangled limbs this sick little man had avoided detection, smiling to himself as he overheard the screams about an insulin shortage in section Delta 6.   Delta 6 was a small community of a couple dozen people who had formed a human chain outside one of the windows towards the rear of the bus.  There had been warnings about a possible insulin shortage in D6 since Berry Street, but little could be done.  Resources were already spread too thin due to a gang war erupting on the roof sometime in between the mall roundabout and the park underpass.    

With all this commotion on the bus we had failed to notice one single man, sitting alone, smiling wickedly as he stroked and caressed the empty seat next to him with sexual affection.  The Korean family above him in Level II didn’t even notice there was a set of shoulders missing below because so many limbs were entwined it was difficult to tell which parts belonged to which person.  People were simply….  Suspended.  I was sure that the moment somebody tried to exit the bus through an actual door the rest of our interlocking bodies be drawn out as well: we’d probably roll around in the street like a giant tumbleweed composed of 700 people and a few dozen pets for a while before collapsing and falling apart.  

I stared bitterly at Lone Sitter, debating whether or not to expose him to the veteran, hardened bus dwellers all around him.  This would surely spell the end of his life.  The second option would be to secretly try to make my way to the seat beside him, and fight him to the death for my right to sit there, because moving up from being a Standing Level I to a Sitting Level I would be great for my back.  Unfortunately, Lone Sitter was at least five aisles in front of me, and reaching him before the madness of Downtown Transfer Season seemed unlikely.  I opted to set the angry mob upon the selfish prick, and was about to do so when suddenly there was a massive jolt as the bus braked and spun sharply to the left.  

The previous bus driver had been killed in a feud with a passenger from Bravo 4 that had started on rue des Meurons over a fare discrepancy and ended forty blocks later with a knife in a man’s skull.  Eventually some kid from the roof drew the shortest straw and was summoned to command  Mother Superior, as our bus was called at the time.  Naturally, we forced him to swear an oath to finish the route with minimal further casualties.  

We were wrong to trust him.

Just as I was about to sentence Lone Sitter to death, Chad Fucking Kroeger stumbled out of a nearby bar and ran into the middle of the street.  Instead of ploughing right through that culture vulture and getting us home expeditiously as a decent human would have, our idiotic driver slammed on the brakes!  It sounds crazy as I write this now, but I think he was trying NOT to hit Chad Kroeger!  As the bus skidded violently sideways on the slick roads it became clear that the overloaded Mother Superior was about to roll.  And roll she did, between 47 and 12,472 times, authorities would later say.  The bus didn’t come to a complete stop until it finally hit a giant road runner, who sadly didn’t beep-beep until it was too late.  

Nobody knows for sure what happened to the passengers outside the windows or on the roof of the bus.  Most current estimates suggest over one hundred people may have been scattered throughout Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas.  Amazingly, all the people inside the bus who hadn’t already perished from consumption survived, because the tightly packed bodies within the panels didn’t allow the frame to crumple inwards.  It’s shocking that everybody left the scene intact.

Well, everybody except that selfish dick, Lone Sitter.  I caught him walking away from the scene and gouged his eyes out with his own house keys.  

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I hope this true story reminds all of you to be courteous to others on the bus!