A 30-ish black woman was riding the bus, and all I saw was a black woman riding the bus. Ordinary scene, ordinary woman, ordinary everything. Gave it no additional thought, as I looked out the window, watching a young kid on a skateboard, wishing I could skate, wondering if it’s too late to learn.
A black man came forward from the back of the bus, and said “Excuse me” to the woman. He looked every bit as ordinary as she, and she ignored him, probably assuming he was just trying to make time.
Maybe he wasn’t, though, because his second line was, “You are Kenyan,” stated as a fact, not a question. It came with an accent, presumably Kenyan.
“Yes,” she said, with what sounded like the same accent.
“I am also Kenyan,” he said, and then their conversation switched to a language unknown to me. Wild guess? Kenyan.
She lit up, and for the next ten blocks they talked like old neighbors, which I guess they were. They both enjoyed the chance to speak their native language, until eventually the man rang the bell and stepped off the bus, saying, “Goodbye, and welcome to America,” in English (obviously). She continued smiling for another few blocks.
Race is weird, ain’t it? An Asian acquaintance once told me that he could tell what country another Asian person was from — Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc — by the structure of their face, but whatever he could see, I couldn’t. I can certainly tell the difference between individual faces, but have no idea what makes a random Chinese face distinguishable from a random Korean face.
And I guess it’s the same with Africans, if two Kenyan strangers can recognize each other as Kenyans.
Hell, I’m white, but there’s no way I could tell a Scotsman from an Irishman from an Australian, unless one of them’s wearing a kilt or waving a flag.
♦ ♦ ♦
The fat, balding guy sitting toward the back of the bus? Yeah, it was me.
Diagonally opposite, an East Asian woman sat with her daughter, about four years old. Little kids on the bus can be unpleasant, squawking and screaming and singing and throwing toys or whatever, but this kid had been properly trained and was hardly any bother at all.
The mom rang the bell, the bus pulled into a stop, the doors opened, and mom & kid got off. As the door closed, I noticed a pink hat with ears, on the seat they’d just left. Probably would’ve done this if the kid had been loud, but she’d been quiet so what the hell, I grabbed her hat, and shouted to the driver as he let the brake off, “Could you open the doors again please?”
I was too far away to hear whether the driver sighed or muttered, but he stopped the bus again, and opened the doors. I didn’t get off, but hollered, “Hey lady!” She was the only lady there and only a few feet away, so she stopped and turned and looked at me, and I leaned out the door, holding a stanchion in one hand and the kid’s beanie in the other. She took the hat, and smiled and nodded but didn’t say thank you, possibly because she didn’t speak English. On the bus, she’d been talking Pakistani or whatever to the kid.
Then I shouted “Thanks!” to the driver, sat down again, and we rolled away.
Please note, I don’t like telling stories where I’m the good guy. It’s bad for my image. In this story, the good guy is the bus driver, for stopping and re-opening the doors, even though he’d already stopped and opened the doors. Some drivers won’t do that a second time.
♦ ♦ ♦
A youngish white man was riding the bus, in a ponytail and stripped Aztec-style shirt. He was talking zen nonsense to strangers who didn’t seem interested, and he said something about crystals and his chakra, and I rolled my eyes and wished I could shut off my ears. He babbled on with a few more blocks of zen talk, and then said, “That’s why I work at Safeway. My way is safe, and I hope yours is, too.”
It was too stupid to be tolerated, so I spoke up from two rows behind on the bus: “Is that really *why you work at Safeway? Not for the paycheck, but just so you can have that pithy line?”
The zenny guy looked at me for a long moment, and then forgot the zen and said, “What is your fuckin’ problem?”
I shook my head but said nothing more, simply turned and looked out the window.
♦ ♦ ♦
A different day, on a different bus, I was in a front-facing seat, just behind a woman wearing cut-offs with her legs up, in a sideways seat. She was half a century too young for a man of my age, but did I mention, legs up in a sideways seat.
Spent half my ride side-eyeing her legs, wondering how high they went, and half my ride looking at a man in a sideways seat in front of me, facing the leggy woman. He had a better view of her, but was being less discreet about it. When she rang the bell, she glared at him but not at me (discretion is the better part of valor). She stepped off the bus, and that man’s eyes followed her until the bus pulled ’round a corner.
Me, I’d seen enough of the legs, so I just watched the watcher watching, and wondered why he had to be so brazen about it. Do the math, man. If you make a lady wearing cut-offs feel self-conscious or endangered, she’s less likely to wear cut-offs next time. Why would you do that?
Should’ve said that to the dude, but he had muscles.
6/12/2026
Leave a Reply