On bus riding.

You there. Yes, you. You with the bingo-wings, you with the listless grin, you with the empty eyes. Name me one good thing about riding on a bus that has people on it. Go on, I challenge you. I bet you can’t do it. You know why I can make such a bet? Because I’ve researched this – there IS nothing good about getting on a bus with people on it. An empty bus? Great. A full one? It’s hellish. The main reason it’s hellish? Idiots.

Every single bus journey is the same, picture the scene: An overweight, middle aged, self-appointed cognoscenti, straining the buttons on the front of his Hugo Bass 2 piece – bellowing commands and descriptions down the phone. “Yes, that’s right. THE BUS. I’m on the bus. Yes. Loads of people. Just going down Conway street. No, there’s loads of kids. Sorry. Push the yen against croutons, float the bellends on the Dow. Yes, no, too many fucking hoodies. Disgusting. State of the nation, eh? *Guffaw*.” Every time I am near one of these conversations my mind drifts off and attempts to create a picture of the recipient of the phonecall – and each and every time I end up imagining a member of a terrorist organization being given a step-by-step rundown of who is on the bus, where they are, what they’re doing, how much attention they’re paying. That’s how it happens, maybe.

Next to barely-evolved-neantherdal man will inevitably be four interchangeable, androgynous babies – gender discernible solely based on whether they’re wearing blue or pink. Attached will be 4 self-righteous mothers, who seem to think that just because they’ve ruined their vaginas, and prompted earlier sagging, that we should somehow congratulate them. Well done! You’ve ruined my journey, and furthered the over-population. Plus you’ve called your kid something like Frahnkey. Stop doing that. Pick a name, and spell it properly – it’s not your right to just play with words. If it was, well then we’ve descended much farther than I’d wished.

Alongside the babies (how does something so inherently tiny end up taking so much goddamn room!?) will then be some cooing grandmothers; you can see their mental processes from 30 ft and they’re always the same. ‘I bet that child shits rainbows.’ You know it is that. That’s still no excuse for smelling like wee though.

This leaves you with three types of people. One: foreign students, who, aside from a general inability to control the decibel level, are pretty harmless – well, as long as you don’t mind having a black and decker pushed slowly through your eardrum until it ruptures your brain -, two; people trying to keep themselves to themselves. Now these people suffer from robberitis, or adulteritis – in that, by trying to be inconspicuous, they thus make themselves so unbelievably noticeable, you can’t keep your eyes off them apart from to throw angsty looks at baby Jawn’s mother. They’ll sit there shuffling down in their seat – distracting – they’ll continually throw looks at all the people on the bus – you catch their eye – and they’ll radiate discomfort like it’s an airborne disease. Don’t sit too close! You’ll catch human-hedgeitis!

And our final category: people younger than you. Doesn’t matter what age you are – 13, 20, middle-aged, arthritic, octogenarian – anyone younger than you is a criminal, one who wants to rob you, leave your legs broken, lying in a pile of your own urine in some back alley. And here is my point: put anyone in a mundane situation, and the level of irrationality is unbelievable. I wish I could crack open a few heads, buy a penseive and watch events unfold at my whim – but, as I can’t, I have to pretend. Any I do, I always do. You know why I do? Because it distracts me from the newspaper, and THAT, is the highest form of torture nowadays.