The advantages of having one class a day is that my commuting schedule is fairly simple: take one series of buses out to the school, and one set back. Now, there are two optional routes to take. One route, the "traditional" one, is to catch a half-hourly bus not even a block away from my house, then catch a bus that takes me down one solid street from St. Paul into Minneapolis. Then I get off at the library and catch a third bus to the actual school building. The second, or "back-up" route gets me to walk about three blocks to a bus that takes me to a bus stop near an off-ramp, which takes me via highway to the same library, previous mentioned. From there it's the same direction.
So today (I'm actually writing this many days after the day it happened, although I started writing it the day after, but, for the sake of the story let's keep it in recent-tense) I had to take the "back-up" route, because I think I can do in two minutes what it takes me five-to-ten minutes to do. Well, anyway.
I started walking down the long stretch of street in an attempt to reach the second bus before the first one would. The first bus normally gets to the second bus's stop a minute after the second bus is supposed to have left. I was also doing this so that instead of sitting on a bench waiting for the first bus, I could meet it at a different stop, therefore getting myself some exercise, and possibly reaching the second bus, previously mentioned as.
Well, I caught up to the first bus, which had just passed by me to reach a stop, at that stop, mentioned as previously. For some reason, the bus started to depart from the stop before I was able to get on it. This pissed me off, and, having shaken my fist at buses for doing this in the past, I decided that this time I'd flip the bird.
So I did. And I'm sure someone on the bus saw, as I was banging it by the windows, but also, I'm sure the woman and her young daughter saw it too. I regret this, but in the moment the bus was the one being the dick of the situation!
Well, not for long. The bus stopped. For me.
So here I am, socially maladjusted, having just flicked off a bus which was now waiting just for me.
So I decided to not get on, and keep running past it as if I were too cool for it. As if I could get where I was going without it.
Also I was scared.
As the traffic on the street was a bit heavy, I would surpass it, then it would surpass me. I keep running, though, out of fear that the bus driver would be proven the winner in this imaginary game which I had created and was solely responsible for; I was running for my dignity, yet without it.
But then, there I was: winning this race, almost, nearly, at the corner where the second bus stop was just feet from.
I knew that I would become vindicated, and all the shame of what I had done would dissipate.
VROOM!
Then I heard, on the street behind me, the bus, passing me as if it were the final stretch, as if the bus driver knew they could shame me as the person who gave the middle finger to a bus before a small child that I was.
But it was at that point when I decided fuck it, I'm practically anonymous!
So the bus won, but I had called it off.
Take that, bus driver!
.......Then I had to wait in the sun for about half an hour before catching the second bus. I think I was late for class.
t
