bus driver

i made my way off the train into the sunrisy coldness. my walk from there isn't far. i go down the rusted stairs, through the turnstile and to the street just outside the doors. there i cross the street at a clearly marked pedestrian crosswalk that appears to be a mystery to those who are not pedestrians. i wait on the other side for the bus. mmmmm. bus. i like the idea of public transportation and i even like the trains some days. but i despise the bus. it is a slow and claustrophobic trip and where the train always seems to be bustling with the mood of the city, the bus is humming with the rage of folks who look like they want to hurt you because you aren't as tired and miserable as they are. not all busses, i'm sure. but my bus, at 6:30 in the morning.

by far the most attractive part of my own personal bus experience is that i wait at a stop directly under the train i just left. outside on the pavement. under a trestle. this is the sort of place my parents warned me about. the only thing open at this hour is a laundry that seems to cater entirely to ranting homeless men. so i stand in the what has been mostly the dark and is now the semi-dark, under the rumbling trains, under a million crapping pigeons, next to people who have had the same cold for years. people who will knock me to the ground to get on the train in front of me. folks who do not understand how to get in a line. somewhere, elementary school teachers have been doing some shoddy work with that. so every single day i despise the bus and on days when the wind isn't biting and my bags aren't heavy, i walk this three mile leg of my commute.

but not today. today i got on the bus just behind a woman my age who was standing behind a man who was behind me until she shoved both of us out of the way with her bag. i got myself up the little stairs, dropped my metrocard into the reader and sank into one of the rare single seats. these seats are delicious because they stretch maybe five seats back, each seat facing forward and completely alone, like little ducks lined up behind the seat of the driver. if you snag one of these you don't have to smell the coffee and cigarette breath of the person piled up next to you. nobody touches your skin or sits on your coat. nobody coughs or sneezes on you. so the day was going well. i got out my knitting and began. the bus sat there under the train trestle and the pigeons for a long while. generally, by the time i get on the bus after kindly allowing the rest of the planet to make their way onto the bus in front of me, the bus is pulling away from the curb. i stumble with the lurching of the bus and my bag almost always smacks into some miserable victim of the bus.

but not today. i am sitting there knitting all over the place in my precious single seat and i notice folks around me rustling about. we certainly have been sitting there too long. our bus driver stands up. he is looking out the window and i follow his eyes to a huge semi with one of those crazy tall cabs that i think might be an attempt at aerodynamic something. but the truck is almost as tall as the trestle. and in the middle of the trestle is some sort of metal box that hangs down just a bit lower than the big i-bar looking things where he is very likely to hit it. people on the bus are watching. people behind the truck are honking. it seems pretty clear to me from where i sit the truck driver is afraid he'll get stuck or break something and i'm not sure why the people behind him can't also see that. but it is pretty early and that might be why. because otherwise they would just have to be idiots.

but then the bus driver does what none of the idiots in such a hurry and none of the folks just milling around had the sense to do. he got out of the bus, waved to the truck driver, said something, then walked out into the road in front of the truck. he looked way up at the bottom of the trestle. he looked way up at the top of the truck. he smiled and waved the driver forward slowly. the truck slid up a bit. the bus driver continued walking backward in the street, guiding the truck driver a few feet at a time under the trestle not quite an inch above the top of the truck. all this time the folks behind the truck, possible idiots, were honking like mad and cars in the other lane were speeding past between us in the bus and the opposite lane full of the truck.

when the truck cleared the trestle the bus driver walked back across the street and swung himself up the steps and into his seat. the bus was quiet, but i looked around and noticed people were smiling. big smiles like they had really seen something.