I'm a subway guy. 81...81 dollar....81 dollar month paaaaaaass*! One thing that I have avoided is using the bus. This is because they are scary and are bad. The whole kitten-caboodle**.
I get flustered when it comes to some normal everyday functions. Once I understand them, they're not so bad, but until then....spooooooky. This isn't unlike most people, I think (I hope). I had/have a debilitating fear of banks, the post office, and a sundry of other similar thingies. "DAWG! YOU SCARED OF DA POST OFFICE?!" Yes. Think about it, if you don't understand how the facility/process works, you hold up the queue. Bank and post office trips are chores to the everyday worker. You all have been in a line, and have some bumbling idiot ahead just muckin things up with the normal protocol, and you wanna kill him. Amiright?
Well, give him a break, cause it's probably me, and I'm easily angered, and I'll punch-a-bitch, I swears it.
It's amazing what my brain will imagine and make "real." I walk into a bank, and immediately everybody looks at me and scoffs thinking things like, "Look at this jerk, he doesn't know a great many things, I bet." Or, "Look at this jerk, I bet he's dumb and will mess up at the teller's post. Ha ha ha! What a dumb jerk!"
The same thing happens with the entire bus process. The first thing is trying to figure out whether you're at the right stop or not. I look at the signs proclaiming what buses come and whatever, but I never understand which direction they'll be heading. The subway is clearly marked with MULTIPLE direction-like words. For example: "Uptown and the Bronx," "Downtown and Brooklyn," or "Uptown and Manhattan." These people are genius! Not only do I know that I am going the right way, but I also know where the other people on the train will end up even after I get off!! SWEET! The bus? Couldn't tell ya anything about anything.
Let's say you got lucky (or asked someone really angry and New Yorky for help) and are at the right stop, and get on the right bus in the right direction. You have a few people behind you in line, and a few in front. You see the people in front using their MetroCard to get on the bus, but you can't see the way the slide it into the machine. You get up there, and you look at the picture to figure it out. BAM, already people behind you hate you. So, you panic and just throw your card in any way you can manage, muffing it up 3 or 4 times before the angry, New Yorky bus driver grabs the card and does it for you. Now, you are this evil, stupid person to anyone within 7 feet of the incident.
You're on, you're moving, you think things are great. Boy, are you wrong. Again, the subway wins for "Stop Recognition." No, subway train operators don't always say which stop you are at out loud over the speaker clearly, or at all sometimes, but the bus people? You're screwed. The subway walls and pillars have the stop listed every 5 feet! Awesome! The bus only has the city's street signs to use. They are much smaller and hard to see at night. Between the "Furpow sra" which is busdriver for "Thirty-first street" and the non-existent signs, you almost missed your stop. THANKFULLY, you used a GPS thing on your phone***, cause you knew it was gonna be trouble.
So, you stand up, in a panic, but never letting the panic show to the enemy (everyone else). You're actin all cool, waiting at the back door of the bus for the bus to stop. It does. The door remains closed. Damnit, you see "User Operated Door" in type in front of you. Easy enough: it's a door. You push it. WRONG. There's a thin yellow strip that has magic inside it, and somehow when you touch it, it releases into the door, making it openable. Why, oh why, are BUSES trying to look/be on the cutting edge of futuristic technology with a yellow strip? Give me a break. You're a bus: I don't need, or even want, you to look cool.
NOW, You are being yelled at (not made up in your head. this time it's a true thing) by the people behind you and the bus driver himself, because you don't understand how to release the magic! Finally a giant, angry, New Yorky man reaches over your shoulder and releases beautiful bus magic into the door, not before he releases miserable curses upon you and your family.
So, in all the panic and unnecessary turmoil, you lose track of which direction you need to walk when you're finally out of the torture chamber and you walk the wrong way, looking even more like a tourist.
Hey bus.....you suck. Well, except for the fact that beyond all the havoc you wreaked on my soul, you got me where I needed to go in HALF the time as the subway system would've taken me. Hey bus.....you still suck.
*
** Yes, thanks, I know it's wrong. That's the point.
***Of course, you had to be really sly about it. Nothing more uncool than looking at GPS in NY.
