By Sarah Henry
November 02, 2021
It’s often the best thirty minutes of my day, where I begin to feel less like capital M “Me” and more like any other stranger commuting to work or school or to the pet store for a cat’s overpriced canned food. I feign impatience, afraid I’ll get caught enjoying something mundane. I tap the toe of my shoe in circles, jiggle my knee like I am anxiously waiting for my stop. On Tuesday at 6 pm, when I should be doing just about anything else, I hop on the bus and sink into the static of other people’s lives. The day falls away, passing in smears of green and blue and white outside the windows. I am less a person than a passenger.
When I was younger it was the big yellow bus with its faux leather seats, dark blue and stretching to accommodate the weight of 20 years of whispered rumors and post-P.E. sweat. In middle school, the bus was a warzone, a place where closing your eyes and listening to music was as good as a death sentence. Full water bottles were launched across aisles packed with kids. Stink bombs were released. Windows were thrown open. Students fought for a single nostril full of fresh air. I remember one day in seventh grade when someone stuck neon pink bubblegum in my friend’s hair on our way back from school. I walked home with her from the bus stop as she swore clunky profanities, her tongue still unaccustomed to their weight. That day we had no other choice but to take a pair of craft scissors and hack away at the knotted mess.
In high school, I claimed a space for myself on the near-empty bus three rows down from the front. The bus driver was kind. We only ever spoke in pleasantries and hand waves and 20 cent holiday cards: a shared language. Some days I put headphones in, kept the music off, and eavesdropped on the conversations around me: the elementary kids in front debating the best post-recess snacks, the sixteen-year-olds behind me scribbling internet answers onto unfinished homework. Other days, minutes passed by in the same ten songs I was too stubborn to get tired of.
Now I take the bus to work and back. We stretch through a portal of trees on a long semi-wooded road. Away from the chaos of the college town which resembles an anthill in the mid-afternoons, people swarming over sidewalks, from home to lunch to class. Away from the broken half-familiarity of my neighborhood. The ride is bumpy, sometimes it feels more like a malfunctioning rollercoaster than anything else. I sit side by side with people whose names I’ll probably never know, who are just like me in ways I’ll never guess. We see each other every day and yet we never speak. It sounds like some lonely riddle, but really it feels like its own self-contained community, an unspoken agreement to be together in transit for a short time before rejoining the world.
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