The Last Laugh (or Run Holly Run)

[cosmolinguist]

Dedicated to Maggie, of course, because she made all this possible.

Say what you will about London — and there's plenty to say, starting with the fact that even the cheap day-travelcard costs what I pay for a week's bus pass — but once you have that travelcard you can get on anything going anywhere in the alloted area.

On first visiting London I had a moment of panic when I saw all those made-for-TV (and the movies) red buses, as I'm used to the color of buses mattering, a lot. Here it's cheaper to get a pass for only one company's kind of buses rather than the any-bus passes, and that means you have to care about, say, whether you can get the blue-ish ones or the white ones.

A week's pass for the white ones costs me about half of the blue ones' price. The white ones only do a couple of routes, but since their route goes by our house, the hospital where we work, and the city centre, they're good enough for us.*

The white buses are also not as frequent, so I can wait a long time for a bus (= 20 minutes, which still makes me feel spoiled because for my whole life until I got to Manchester, if I got in a car (which of course I'd have to find a driver for) and drove very fast for 20 minutes, I still wouldn't be anywhere interesting).

Tonight, after a long day at work that got far too exciting just seconds before I would otherwise have been able to go home, of course I waited ages for a bus. It was 20 minutes before I even saw a white bus at all, and of course it was the much-more-popular 42 and not any of the other numbers, all of which go closer to my house. Sometimes I get the 42 anyway and walk the extra ten minutes or whatever, convinced it'll get me home faster than waiting for a better bus and that, even if it doesn't, it'll make me feel better to be moving, but today was the complete opposite of those times.

A mere (ha!) five or ten minutes later I saw another white bus and, as always, my hopes soared. (It takes me a lot longer before I can see the number on the bus, which more often than not dashes said hopes, of course.) Except I could see problems here right away: the white bus was behind two other buses. The bus stop is in a little lay-by that's long enough for about two buses. I have seen this scenario enough to know what usually happens: the third bus unloads its passengers who want that stop, if any, and takes off as soon as possible. This one had a few people who wanted off, at which point I was running toward it and realizing it was in fact a bus I wanted.

Usually one can scamper on while people are getting off, of course, but in this case the bus had stopped far enough behind the proper bus stop that it was next to a railing that's put on some corners of intersections (which this is) between the sidewalk and the road, to keep people from jaywalking across the street at those points. There was no way I could get down to the end of the railing and back to the door of the bus in the very short time alloted in this suboptimal situation.

I waved frantically at the white bus anyway, hoping it'd move up when one of the buses ahead of it left ... which sometimes works, but I wasn't surprised it didn't now. I ran between the other two still-stubbornly-stationary buses to try to flag my intended down as it zoomed past, which also sometimes works, but I wasn't surprised when it behaved as if I weren't even there.

I stomped angrily back to the bus shelter, wanting to kick it or swear or burst into tears of frustration and exhaustion, but violence is not the answer and I always knew crying in public was a bad idea, and cursing my rotten luck would be not just useless but redundant at this point. Instead I flopped down next to the one other person still at the bus stop, a lady who looked like the kind of forty-year-old who's actually in her early thirties, who said something about how it was never going to stop. She knows the standard operating procedure as well as I do. I sighed and said something about how I'd already been waiting 20 minutes and... She nodded sympathetically.

Then I realized that she was busy realizing that the second of these two buses was still there. No one was getting on or off. Its driver was looking at us, though we were clearly not interested in a 143 Magic Bus.

Magic Buses are called that (as I'm sure I told setharoo when he commented upon them during his visit) because if they hold together long enough to get you to your destination, it'd be magic. They are owned by the blue-ish bus people (obviously old decrepit squealy-braked versions of their regular buses), the people with the expensive tickets and the CEO who donates money to schools that teach creationism, so even though the Magic Buses are cheaper than the other blue-ish buses, we don't use them. (This might also have something to do with the fact that their route stops not far before it'd go past our house.)

Even with my crapness at discerning stuff like body language in the murky dusk (boo! it's getting dark noticeably earlier now) after a long and tiring day, I started to notice that this guy was not just looking at us but beckoning to us. With the help of the lady, I realized that he was telling me to get on his bus, so I could catch up to the bus that had just passed. Though I'd barely noticed him when I stepped between the two buses a couple of paragraphs ago, he'd clearly noticed me waving and then stomping off with a deep desire to throw a tantrum.

I got on the bus gratefully, with renewed faith in the Magic Bus and thus all of humanity ... for if these rattletrap contraptions have a redeeming feature like compassion, all good things are possible again. It was quickly dissolved, though, by the realization that I was stony broke. I could probably get home for 70 or 80p from here, but I'd spent my last 90p on a cake for lunch, at least five of which p were indeed pennies. If I hadn't gotten the Tesco clerk who always tries to flirt with me, I probably wouldn't have been able to buy anything at all because it took too much patience on their part to count out the handful of 5p coins (with a 20p or two for good measure).

I weakly held up the white-bus pass I'd been brandishing at the white-bus driver, which is a trick Andrew and I have learned to say "no, we really do want your bus, not the one in front of you/just coming up/etc, now stop!" Like the other good bus-conjuring tricks, it works — occasionally. Obviously it hadn't aroused a mote of pity this time, which was why I found myself in this situation at all: "This is all I have," I apologized, waving my white-with-orange-trim pass, for the buses that matched it and not for this blue monstrosity. "I don't have any money..." If he said anything I didn't hear it, but he smiled and that was enough for me to scoot back to an empty seat before he changed his mind or something.

Despite the long day and the stress, I was smiling too at this point, grinning like a loon in fact. I was so happy I couldn't stay still; I came back to the front of the bus to look out through the windshield in case I could spot my bus. But my surrogate bus was still just behind the one it'd been following when it got to my stop, my alleged bus having of course zoomed around them already.

Soon I went back to sit in my seat in case the bus driver realized what a subversive thing he'd done. I realized that this was indeed the route that would take me nearly all the way to my house, so I was content with not catching my real bus. The walk wouldn't be so long as the from-the-42-bus one that I had refused a few minutes earlier. Besides, walking didn't seem so bad now that I was nourished with the lovingkindness of the Magic Bus driver. I did not pull out my book, as I usually would on a bus, but I did sit demurely with my hands in my lap, accepting my new fate.

Then the reason I didn't start reading, the thing I was hoping would happen, happened: I saw us pass a white bus and wrenched around in my seat to verify: yep, it was the one I'd tried to get on before. It stopped right there, and I flew to the front of my bus, not bothering to ring the bell, not noticing if anyone else wanted off or on, but it worked out anyway as either my lovely bus driver noticed the same thing I did, or he just noticed me rushing like a linebacker to the front of the bus, because he stopped (and I don't remember anyone else getting in my way on or off the bus as I made my exit, and thinking that he stopped just for me makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, as well as very slightly conspiratorial, both of which are fun).

I rocketed out of the bus, jumping over the steps between bus floor and pavement and landing on both feet at the same time, like a little kid jumping in a puddle. During my air time I pondered what I'd do if the white bus took off at this point. I heard (didn't bother to look) my Magic Bus pull away as soon as I was clear of it and suddenly I could picture my rotten public-transport luck continuing, leaving me stranded with the same do-I-get-the-42-or-do-I-wait-all-night dilemma, but with the added unpleasantness of being in Fallowfield.

As I sprinted full tilt boogie for the second time in the last half-hour, I figured the white-bus driver might take off just out of spite. Maybe he'd recognize me. Worse, maybe he wouldn't recognize me but would do that anyway just because he's like that. (Personally I'd rather be right about paranoia; I'd rather think the world is out to get me because the other alternative seems to be that it treats everybody else just as badly.) But someone else was already getting on the bus and had to buy a ticket, which bought me more than enough time to scamper through the doors.

I held up my bus pass with all the aggressive defiance such an action can muster — not much — and hoped at this point that he did recognize me: the girl you thought you left behind, probably with a smirk on your face, back there by Tesco. I bet you laughed at me, I thought (though it seems unlikely now ... but he did look grumpy; perhaps he sneered at me), but I have the last laugh!

I bet he did recognize me. I was wearing my hat. It's not like any of your hats. A co-worker noticed it as I was leaving. "Nice hat! Very French chic," he said.

I don't even think he was being sarcastic.

* Until I started making friends in Levenshulme ... but that wasn't a concern until two weeks ago! And I can walk there. Yesterday I even made it across Kingsway without dying; I was proud.

Comments

YES

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

I'm going to force you to make a book of these.

I'm going to force you to tell me:

[cosmolinguist]

These what?! :)

Re: I'm going to force you to tell me:

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

DEEEEZ NUUUUUTTTTSSSS!!!!!

ha ha ha ha, works every time.


Seriously, though, these entries. You write in a way that I can feel what you were feeling.

[cosmolinguist]

You are very kind, sir. :) It probably won't surprise you that you're not the first to say so, or that I'm still just as confused about this as I was the first time. But, also, just as flattered.

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

Or, less, eloquently, I am entertained by what you write. I don't have to get effusive, but I will if provoked.

Re: I'm going to force you to tell me:

[cosmolinguist]

No, wait, the question still holds: which entries? :)

That's what I always ask the people who say this, because I honestly don't get why people like the ones they like (they shore ain't the ones I like best, though there's some overlap in the two groups). They end up in sputtering incoherence, thinking it's obvious but to me it's not really, and thus the book remains unwrit!

Re: I'm going to force you to tell me:

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

This one was about your indomitable spirit, which is always good to read about. AND AND you jumped out of the bus with both feet, which is energetic and frivolous. Both qualities that people lose along their way.

[cosmolinguist]

And here I nearly didn't mention that I jumped out of the bus with both feet. :) It wasn't really intentional, so I debated its relevance.

But, as you'll see from the extraordinary length (even for me, and I always think I need to include the context of everything) of what is really a very simple story, most of the debatable things ended up getting thrown in.

Thank you for your specific answer; I wasn't intending this to be the kind of question you get after the little stories in your grade school reading books ("What did you like best about this story?") (or at least, that's what you got if you were me), but since you took it that way and explained, I have another point of information to add to the strange statistics of things I know about my writing.

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

I tend to connect with bits of stories that I see (or want to see) in myself, and I frequently jump with both feet, and other similar childlike enthusiasms. And I like to see that in other people.

[cosmolinguist]

That's a great thing to know about you. Thanks for saying so. I like to think of you jumping with both feet.

[diffrentcolours]

Jumping with both feet is definitely the win.

Now I'm cycling again, I've re-adopted my habit of shouting "Magic pedestrian go!" when dismounting to use a pedestrian crossing. It's vaguely reminiscent of random anime weirdness, and it keeps me happy.

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

HA HA HA HA you morph instantly into pedestrian! For great justice!

[cosmolinguist]

Excellent. Not enough people say "For great justice!" any more.

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

I am SO old school.

It's either "for great justice" or "for the revolution" if there's anything remotely Chinese nearby.

[nodressrehersal.livejournal.com]

Whew! I'm all out of breath, reading about this big adventure. I've gotta sit down. Wait, I am sitting. This is like a scratch-and-sniff post, only with breathing.

[cosmolinguist]

This is like a scratch-and-sniff post, only with breathing.

Best compliment ever!

Or at least I've decided to take it as one.

[nodressrehersal.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely meant as one. When a reader experiences everything you've described in a written piece, well, what more could you possibly ask than that?

Now about that defibrillator...

[cosmolinguist]

It bemused me that you and xianrex both talk about the physical impact of this story, when it doesn't seem to have much except maybe for that bit about jumping off the one bus. I just thought it was a story about a kind and ever-so-slightly rebellious bus driver (though I do realize that my stories about any one specific thing do have this tendency to bloat beyond all reason).

But then I think about how much physical activity is hidden in my experience of public transport. I remember laughing so hard at soltice, trudging her way back to my house (from a Magic Bus, actually) one night, saying "And here I was afraid I wouldn't get my exercise when I'm here on vacation!"

She's used to driving everywhere she needs to go, and I'm used to the walking and indeed sprinting. I once ran what Andrew's sure is a mile, two days in a row, for trains. I bolt for buses all the time, because I know how long it might be until I see the next one. Just a couple of days ago I walked very fast for 20 minutes to get a bus that I would've gotten 10 minutes earlier if I'd just stayed where I was (ah, but I didn't know that, you see, and I thought I had good reason to do what I did). I just don't think these things are remarkable these days.

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

I'd have to read it again to try to identify specific parts, but your descriptions very aptly communicated the feelings you went through, and it had a happy ending. So there.

[cosmolinguist]

I'm finding this really interesting but to be honest it probably wouldn't work so well with people who weren't as glowingly complimentary as you are being here; I am completely wrong-headed about criticism and can't take it at all without descending into ire, doubt, or at least enough irritation to make me legitimately worth criticizing for a while, no matter what I tried to do, because I'd sap all the fun out of it.

But this is all well and good when I'm hearing what I'm doing well. :) It's good to know. As f'rinstance I think I'm good at describing things as they happen to me, but of course I can't tell about that unless someone else tells me.

[xianrex.livejournal.com]

I hear that. I haven't done enough real art to be able to handle criticism... at all.

[cosmolinguist]

Maybe that's it: I just need more practice. :)

But you can guess how likely I think that is.

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Superb entry, especially the bit about the bus driver pwnage at the end.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, that's my favorite part too. :) Though the colluding bus driver warms my heart; who would've thought that there were such things?!

Buses

[squirmelia.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I remember seeing a Magic Bus when I was in Manchester and wondered about them! Now I know. :)

My current bus has wifi inside it and dolphins painted on the outside of it. Today at the bus-stop I was treated to a guy with dreads and an "I am Spartacus" t-shirt playing with his poi next to me. The strange thing about my buses is that they have music on them and when they get crowded during term-time and the students are all standing, it can feel like a rave. At Christmas, Santa is sometimes seen driving the buses.

This is a bus-stop, but not the one I was standing at this morning:
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/squirmelia/1031376361/)