The bus is not only late, it’s full.
Of course, the later a bus is, the more people are waiting
for it.
Minneapolis is just days away from an official
declaration of summer.Bare-limbed and
light-headed, we grin at each other. Look at us!We’re not wearing hats and we’re not cold!
We’ve shed our winter skins, the layers of down, of fleece
and flannel.
What’s a little late bus between like-minded folk such as
we?
Eventually, of course, the bus arrives; and I take a seat at
the front.It’s not my preferred
location – I would rather be seated near the video cameras, just in case things
get weird – but we don’t always get what we want.
I am humming “you can’t always get what you want” when I
first note the man across from me.
He has a full plate of Chinese food on his lap.
And he is sitting directly under the “No Smoking, No Loud
Music, No Food” sign.
A full plate of Chinese.
Not a take-out container.
A plate.
I frown, quickly place the first two fingers of my right
hand over the ever-deepening furrows between my eyes.Did he walk out of a buffet with this
platter?
This bus is giving me wrinkles.
People!What’s the
point of a little picture of a plate of food with a line running through it if
one can just board a bus, willy-nilly, with Combination #4?
Aside from that, and in the paraphrased words of fourth
grade teacher Miss Staples:did he bring
enough for everyone?
The rest of my commute is consumed with this thought.What’s this world coming to, when one is free
to choose which posted rules one obeys?What’s to keep me, for instance, from lighting up, right here, perhaps
while playing – audibly! – any number of my phone’s available ring tones?
My bus stop is next, and with these thoughts I rise, only to
lurch forward awkwardly, twisting my ankle and stumbling into the aisle.
And Chinese Food Man leaps to his feet, balancing the plate
in one hand and catching me under the arm with the other.
He grins at me.And gratefully,
I grin back.
“Careful there, hon,” he says.“Don’t want to see you get hurt now.”
Hey.This guy wants to
eat his dinner on the bus?Well that’s okay
with me.