A Lesson from the Bus Driver: Everybody’s a Risk

Faces turn off on a bus the same as they do on elevators. Even the driver’s face was off today. She must have some personality, though, right?

I figure this for 2 reasons:

  1. My face goes off too, and I’m virtually made of personality, so the most reasonable, golden-rulish assumption in this case is to believe that she, too, beneath that powered-down exterior is lively and perhaps even worth knowing.
  2. She wore a pink neck pillow on her shoulders. And from what I could tell, it doubled as a stuffed dog. So that’s something.

I muttered a “Good morning,” which ended up just coming out, “Morn.” She didn’t acknowledge me. I took my seat about halfway back.

I was a little concerned, given the time of day, the driver’s seeming lethargy, and the stuffed animal, that she might be about to nap on the job. Fortunately, one of the strange few who leave their faces on while riding the bus (like people who don’t face forward in an elevator) got her talking.

I couldn’t hear what he said to her, but I heard her just fine. He must have said something about dogs. (And now that I think about it, it was a pretty likely topic to liven her up a bit with, given her neckwear.)

She entered her new conversation with surprising gusto:

Yeah, I got two dogs at home. If I could bring ‘em with me on the 5, I’d never have trouble. Course, no one would ride. Heh.…

No, I don’t work weekends. Not after the shooting on the 22.…

14’s gettin’ bad, too. Just as bad. But it doesn’t go all night. The 5 does, so it gets all the riff-raff.

That’s what they need to do: Stop running all night. Then the troublemakers can’t get where they wanna go. Not on the bus, at least.

I know some people want the 10 to run more, cuz…

The conversation faded out for a moment, and when it returned, her interlocutor was a bit easier to hear.

He said, “…Homeless would take the 10 to Northtown and sleep in the backyards there.”

The driver kept on talking like he hadn’t said anything.

The 16’s another one that runs through the night. People’d try to ride it all night long. But there was a garage at one end and a layover at the other…

I didn’t hear the end of her sentence. I’m assuming it had to do with kicking people off the bus. She continued, but I could only hear her intermittently:

They don’t need a liquor store to get what they need. All they need’s a…

…That bottle of Listerine has more alcohol than a bottle of beer…

…One guy … 4 AM … terrible … Listerine breath.

Despite her talkiness, her face continued to power down at each stop, and each new rider was met by the same sullen driver that I was. Then the doors would shut, and her mouth would accelerate again with the bus.

We passed an old church that’s now a mosque and an old Super America that’s now Bangkok Market, offering video rentals and a Thai deli. Then I got off.

I was momentarily taken aback by how cheerily the driver wished her departing customers farewell. But as I stepped off the bus into a gas station parking lot, I realized that, for her, every new passenger is a risk, a threat. While every passenger getting off is another danger averted—a burden lifted for just a moment before the next stop where she’ll turn off her face again and pick up the next potential troublemaker.