Not many seats were left, so I sat across the aisle from two scruffy-looking 40-something men who were talking too loud about nothing interesting. One scruffy guy was white, the other was black, so let’s call them by their colors.

Black said, “You’re so full of fuckin’ shit.”

Oh, cool, I’d walked into an argument, and sat right in the middle of it.

White stood up as the bus was moving, walked to the bus’s side door and banged on it, shouting at the driver, “Let me off please! I don’t want to ride with this asshole.”

Saying ‘please’ was a nice touch, but the driver ignored him. Imagine driving a bus full of folks like this, all day every day. You’d ignore people, too.

White rang the bus’s yellow wire, which is the proper way to signal that he wanted off at the next stop.

“I’m an asshole, huh?” Black replied. “Without this ‘asshole’, you couldn’t even find where you’re going.”

“Fuck you,” said White.

“And fuck you,” Black replied.

“No, fuck you,” White insisted, but after a very brief moment of silence he added, “You’re probably right, though. You’re the one who knows where we’re going.”

The driver had pulled the bus into the next stop, but White hollered, “Sorry, never mind, not getting off…” And then to Black he said, “But you’re so damned wrong about the car.”

The bus rolled on, and in bits of conversation over the rest of the ride, their story emerged: Black and White are old friends, and White had loaned his car to Black, who’d parked the car on the street, but it was gone when he came back. Turns out the car had been towed, despite being parked legally, because White had half a dozen unpaid tickets.

“I could’ve parked in Sidney’s driveway,” Black said, “and nobody would’ve towed the car, but you fucker you, you never told me your car had outstanding tickets.”

They were buddies again by the end of the line, walking off together toward a bank, where White would either withdraw the funds to pay his tickets, or maybe stick up the place.

I crossed the street for breakfast, cheerfully alone at Mrs Rigby’s Diner.

♦ ♦ ♦

On a different day, I was waiting for a bus at the Burien Transit Center. A bum, either drunk or dead, was seated on one of the few benches provided, with his pants down. Bum on a bench, so to speak.

Because he was folded over and unmoving, neither the man’s face nor his genitals were on display, but his rear was right there. Dude was sitting on the bench like he was sitting on a toilet.

There are never less than two security guards at the BTC, and on this day there were three. As usual, they were chatting with each other, unconcerned with events at the transit center.

Which is understandable. Not sure I’ve ever seen an event at the transit center that needed a security guard, and I wasn’t even tempted to call their attention to the bum’s exposed buttocks. Other than finding it funny enough to jot in my notebook, I don’t care.

But you gotta wonder why there are security guards at the transit center, always on duty but never doing anything.

♦ ♦ ♦

Another fine day, sitting about halfway back on a bus, I heard a recurring cough from up front. It was a gentle cough, not tuberculosis, but after several slight hacks and barks, I entertained myself by watching the backs of all the passengers in front of me, to see who it was. When there were two more coughs at a stop light, but nobody’s head spasmed or body shook, I deduced that it was the driver.

Maybe he’d thought about calling in sick, but decided to come in and do the work. Gotta appreciate that, unless he’s spreading the plague.

At the end of the line, he pushed the button that makes an automated voice say, “This is the last stop. All passengers should deboard at this time.” All passengers deboarded at that time, except me. I paused at the front door and said, “You want some cough drops?”

“Yeah?” He looked skeptical at the idea of taking meds from a stranger, or maybe at the concept of human kindness. I rattled my bag of Ricola, and he pushed whatever button moved the plexiglass shield from between us. I poured about a dozen individually wrapped drops into his hand, and that was my good deed for April.

4/5/2025

Transit Takes

itsdougholland.com
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