Transient Transplant

“I genuinely don’t have the patience for this,” I thought to myself while sitting on the bus ride home from work listening to two grown men bitch about how the bus should go faster and then proceeded to heckle the driver, telling her when to merge into traffic and to speed up.

I’m convinced the rain in Seattle makes people act absolutely insane and irrational.  This tends to take its toll when it rains for several days in a row.

If it were my bus, I would have kicked their asses off and back out into the rain about five stops back.

But it wasn’t.  I was a mere commuter trying to mind my own business while some entitled asshole decided that since he didn’t know the bus route and it wasn’t getting there fast enough that, “she must be a new driver” or “she must be lost.”

When I got off at my stop, I thanked her and said “Good luck,” craning my head back to the two delinquents that had been giving me a headache with their nonstop commentary on her driving ability since they’d boarded.

Not riling up the person who is driving me seems to be a decent rule in life.  I’d like to not stress out whoever that person might be, as it seems logical that the less stressed they are, the more likely we are to get from A to B without incident.

But a prerequisite for bus drivers here is having a pretty high bullshit tolerance.

Since I’m seemingly becoming less patient each day, I’m frequently in a rage on the bus and wondering how the drivers keep their cool.

Last week I was on the bus and was greeted by the potent smell of pot when two people boarded.

It had been raining for a few days, so the windows were closed, and I wondered exactly how much pot one had to be smoking to reek that badly.  I hoped this guy wasn’t on his way to a job interview.

That’s when someone else got on the bus and I watched a puff of smoke go up in the air and him take a sip of his coffee immediately after.

Bro was smoking a joint on the bus.

I don’t really care what you do in your day to day life as long as it doesn’t really interfere with others in a negative way.

But I don’t want to be on a bus with someone who is smoking a cigarette in the enclosed space, much less getting a contact high from someone lighting a joint.

I was ready to catch him in action and be “that girl” and flip out, when I watched him put it out on his shoe.

I told myself to stay calm.  It was over.  I needed to chill and not cause a scene.

Then the woman in front of me answered her phone and said, “Hold on, let me Facetime you.”

She proceeded to Facetime her friend without headphones so all other passengers could hear both sides of the conversation:  her explaining why she wanted to wear her new white top to the funeral because it was Louis Vuitton, and her friend trying to dissuade her from white being an appropriate color for a funeral.

I’m not really comfortable being that involved in a stranger’s life, so when I got off of the bus, I felt I’d already been emotionally drained for the day, but now I had to go actually do my job.

Though the whole walk in, I was now thinking of adding to my will, “all funeral attendees must meet a dress code standard, or will not be allowed to enter.” I’d be sure to leave money to cover the cost of my funeral bouncer who would enforce my last wishes.

I waited for the bus home that day when a guy wearing a surgical mask started talking to himself at the stop next to me.

I stood in the rain, cursing to myself, wondering why this was happening all in one day.  He was a combination of the two things I was not in the mood for:  germs and an illogical conversation.

I couldn’t decide whether it would be better if he was wearing the mask because of germs or because he thought it was a good fashion statement.

He sat on the back of the bus, periodically shouting at no one.

It wasn’t until he got on the bus again the very next day that I knew I was about ready to become a hermit for the weekend.

He started yelling at the driver, and I thought I was going to have to use my mace, but then stressed out about the repercussions of macing in an enclosed space and didn’t want to run the risk of the driver getting sprayed as well.

He eventually calmed down, and went to the back to yell at no one again.

I felt really sorry for him, but I also was getting tired of feeling on edge riding the bus.

I knew it was time for a long weekend of doing nothing, staying cocooned in my apartment and away from people until Monday, when I’d hopefully have regrown enough patience to get me through at least one day of the coming week.