“What if God was one of us/ Just a slob like one of us/ Just a stranger on the bus/ Trying to make his way home?” (Joan Osbourne)
Because I had to drop my car at a repair shop to have some work done on it this morning, I decided to ride the city bus --- public transportation. The bus stop, after all, was less than 100 feet from the place where I dropped my car, and I timed it so that I would not have to wait long. As it was, the bus was six minutes late --- not too bad given rush hour traffic.
Standing on the side of busy Capital Boulevard, I was aware of the rush and press of traffic in a way I’m generally isolated from --- windows up, music on, filtered air cooling me. Here it is a loud six lanes of cars, with hot auto exhaust and fumes roiling over me every now and then, and an occasional horn blaring. The world is up and moving on a new day. Every car carries a world within, a person or persons preoccupied with their own cares, plans, hopes, and dreams. If you think about the multiplicity of it, it can be overwhelming. And yet God knows each one by name, is intimately familiar with the world in which they live. At one point I had a strange thought: What if a co-worker or someone else I knew saw me? Would they think I had gone “green?” I felt a silly sense of being on display, standing out here in my suit waiting for a bus. I don’t see many men in suits riding buses.
None of my fellow passengers, most of whom are African-American or Latin-American in descent, are smiling. No doubt they are thinking about the day ahead --- for a couple, maybe school, for others work, for one lady with a baby, two toddlers, and a baby carriage, perhaps work and on-site daycare. They look different than my neighbors or co-workers, more like the cross-section of society you see in the DMV office, traffic court, or Wal-Mart.
“You need a transfer?”
“A what?”
“Do you need to change buses?”
Nope. I’m staying with you.”
I am an educated man, and yet I barely know how to do this. I don’t even recall ever riding a bus in this city before. I put my dollar in the tray and take a seat next to a woman clutching a Wake Technical Institute notebook. We pull away from the stop as I take my seat.
“So, you’re in school?” Well, I considered saying that to the woman next to me, but I never did. She’s looking out the window, as am I, listening to the hum of the diesel motor, the cadence of the wheels rolling over cracks in the asphalt. I am enjoying not having to drive, looking at familiar landscape yet able to study it in a way I cannot when I drive myself. I wonder what it’s like to do this every day. I think about how much reading I could get done. I imagine the difficulty of doing it and staying warm and dry when it rains.
Three kids. I bet she’s tired. The youngest drops her toy on the floor, and the black man across from her picks it up and gently hands it to her. Where has she been, or where is she going? How long ago did these kids have to be gotten up, fed, clothed, and walked to the bus stop?
In all of 20 minutes I am dropped one block from my office.
“Have a good day,” I say to the bus driver.
“You too.”
I didn’t see a single slob on the bus. Just people not so different than me. People going somewhere, people with dreams, here between the already and the not yet.
