For about two months now, I’ve been taking the same bus every morning to work. I’m not alone in this habit. I regularly see the same people on my bus. Some are unremarkable in their appearance and behaviour, they’re just normal folk trying to get to where they need to go.
Then there are those who make me wonder what the hell their story is. The most notable person is this woman in her 40s or so. She’s got really dark, jet black hair which makes me believe it might be dyed so. Her hair is about shoulder length and she’s tied it so that a single tail comes out of the top of her head. It’s not a good look. She also has these really thick glasses, your prototypical Coke bottles if you may. The quirks are many for this person. First, she has this big fascination with newspapers. On most mornings she’s got at least the Vancouver Sun and/or one of the free morning dailies with her. Yeah, a lot of people read on the bus, but she’s different. Every once in a while, she’ll feel the need to rip out huge sections of the paper out. This isn’t coupon clipping, we’re talking pages at a time. She’ll stuff the ripped out pieces in her handbag. What she does with them is still a mystery to me.
Her other quirk verges on the annoying. This woman seems constantly late for something. She’s always looking out the window to see what the traffic conditions are in front of the bus. It’s like she’s always behind schedule and needs to be somewhere five minutes ago. Whenever we get into heavy traffic or a construction zone, she’ll start to fret and mutter to herself. Weird. She’ll also start to mumble quietly when the bus has to pull over to pick up passengers along the route. Doubly weird. She gets off the bus one stop before me downtown. I have no idea where she’s going. A job? Paper recyling plant?
There’s also an older gentleman who seems to have warped space around his body. When you look at him, he doesn’t seem like a big guy. He looks slightly portly but I wouldn’t say at all fat. When he sits down though, he takes up like a seat and a half. I don’t get it. He seems to be all the way over to his side but his body is so wide. Also, and this is completely unfounded, he kinda looks like one of those older guys that you later find out was a Nazi who fled to Canada to hide from his past. Man, conjecture is fun ain’t it?
The final person is this younger guy who is obviously a university student. At first I thought he might be an SFU student taking classes downtown but I’ve seen him run for the 44 and 99B. He’s clearly a UBC student. He must live somewhere in Coquitlam and commutes everyday to UBC. You know I’ve heard of these poor bastards that have to do that everyday but this is the first time I’ve seen one in person. He usually has a chemistry book out. I’m guessing he’s either a first or second year student. If he’s a first-year, I’ll give him the rest of the year tops before he goes crazy from the commute. He’s also got the narrowest jeans I’ve seen in decades. They narrow down to basically the width of his ankles. It’s straight outta of the 80s. It maybe the jeans that causes this but he sits with his legs crossed in a manner that if I tried it, I’d crack both my walnuts.
Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if someone else on that bus was writing about me in their blog?