I don’t typically make mistakes. But, boy, when I do. I make them count.
You’ll recall my Zumba accident, perhaps.
And if you need a new reference, well, then, here you go: I took a trip on a bus this weekend to Atlanta.
Not a city bus that takes you twenty minutes or less from Wal-Mart to a museum, or whatever, where I live we don’t really have city buses. No, the bus I took was with a commercial busing company that we’ve come to know as Greyhound.
I was heading to Atlanta to visit an old friend, and do some networking, and eating, and soiree-ing, and chose not to fly, for obvious reasons, nor to drive because it made U.L. too nervous – the traffic in Atlanta Kris, he said, You’d just be borrowing trouble.
So, I found a solution: the bus.
It did not make U.L. feel any better.
The bus? He exasperated. They stab people on buses, don’t they?
As opposed to assigning seats? I asked. I don’t think so. (By the way, they do not assign seats, either. It’s first come, first served, unless you take the bus from Macon, Georgia, where last year a man was stabbed…with nail clippers, no less).
Here’s the full story, if you’re so inclined – http://tinyurl.com/d9hq9dj.
Now Kris, he began, but I cut him off. I’d already bought the ticket online.
And that’s probably where my problems first arose.
Greyhound, at least in the South, has made an attempt to go online. Which is very convenient. However, it has not felt the need to clue its drivers in on this little fact. Which is very inconvenient.
Inconvenience causes rifts between anxious passengers and bus drivers. It also makes bus drivers mean. But, of course, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to grow up to be a bus driver, so I did cut Bob some slack (the driver on the return trip home). Shay-Run, though, the driver on the trip in to Hotlanta, well, she and I had some words.
I flat-out prayed for her right in front of her face, which is frowned upon. FYI.
It turns out, she got the last laugh. She kept a part of my ticket, the part that actually gave me permission to be on the first leg of my return trip. Junior, the very Ossie Davis of Greyhound drivers, though, forgave me and allowed me to stay on board.
When I take over the world, I will allow him to live.
I think I come from good stock, patient and kind, if cautious, and understanding. But, trust me, when I tell you that I have never met a lazier, more disenchanted, unfriendly group of people than those I met with Greyhound. I would die if I were in charge of employer satisfaction surveys. These people are not only unhappy; they’re also paid to be unhappy behind the wheel of a very large bus.
I will be clear on this one point, though: they drove carefully and deliberately, and I see now that that’s their ruse, their trick.
Who cares if they’re rude or crass to you? If they’re on time and on schedule, you almost feel the need to hug them.
(I did not hug them, by the way).
I’ll start briefly with my trip out of Tupelo. The first thing I noticed is that bus stations, in general, are little pockets of third world countries, living right under our noses here in the good, faded glory of the U.S. of A.
It is, I hate to say it, a poorer, cheaper method of transportation that does not appeal to anyone who does not fit into a) a stereotype, or b) dirty pajama pants and torn sportswear. To be other than either of these two points is to draw attention to yourself which, though quite a feat in and of itself when you consider the general clientele of Greyhound, is nevertheless a bad idea.
I was, needless to say, a very bad idea.
Shay-Run picked us up in Tupelo at a station where most of the seats were stained, and there was significant discoloration along the walls where vending machines had either been stolen or they’d just given up hope like the three 80-year-old men behind the Greyhound counter checking people in, balancing their time between bus passengers and frantic people trying to wire money through Western Union.
Shay-Run immediately, after having us load our own bags under the bus, began her spiel about how to pronounce her name, that the bathroom didn’t flush, and that if we had a cell-phone, we needed to speak softly into it so as not to distract her.
The girl in front of me repeated Shay-Run, word for word, to whomever she was speaking with on her cell phone at the time, and was reprimanded.
Then a stinky, fat woman chose to sit next to me, all the while worrying about her “other baby” that she and her boyfriend of dubious background and fashion had left with his “momma.” Her T-shirt had Eeyore on it and read “Cheerless Leader.”
In this manner, my trip started.
She then began to include me in the conversation. I politely told her I wasn’t interested. And still, she sat by me. The Greyhound passenger, you see, in the wild, has developed such a necessary rapacious ability to survive under any social circumstance that they no longer are able to tell when they’re “not wanted.”
Having left my book at home, I was defeated.
So, I prayed for her, too.
Next stop: Birmingham, where it’s always stormy.
I’ll skip Birmingham, for now.
Once in Atlanta, the first thing greeting you is exhaust fumes and a man who believed he was your instant friend, and felt the need to share his colorful language with you about the “people running this country.”
It was the same on the return trip. (I assume he lives in the seat of Gate 2)
We stop, again, in Birmingham.
I’ll skip Birmingham, for now.
Fast forward to Bob. I don’t like Bob. He was my driver on the way home; Bob, who pulled two people off the bus and left them in Birmingham. One, because she didn’t have a ticket for that leg of the trip (dodged a bullet there, didn’t I?) and the other because he had a knife and apparently engaged in inappropriate behavior with an underage girl in Piedmont Park.
(You win, U.L. I mean, who are these people??)
Bob drove me all the way from Birmingham to Tupelo, eyeing me from time to time in the rearview mirror all because I asked him twice if the bus in section one (back at the Birmingham terminal) was the bus that went to Tupelo. (I’d gotten on the wrong bus back in Atlanta, and just barely escaped a forlorn trip to Cincinnati with Helen, the woman who had been standing in front of me waiting to get on the bus and was headed to Cincinnati “on account of a grandson done got put in jail.” Of her five teeth, I liked the one that jiggled the most. He had personality.
I had merely wanted to make sure I would end up in Tupelo, a place I’ve never thought of as heaven until this weekend. I was even looking forward to the nasty seats at the station because yes, they’d be nasty seats, but they be nasty seats in Mississippi, where God’s people are.
Those were my nasty seats.
Here’s a record of our exchange:
ME: “This is the bus to Tupelo, right?”
HIM: “Idn’t that what I told you?”
ME: “Well, you just pointed, and I wanted to make sure.”
HIM: “I just checked you in! Right?! And ain’t I the driver??”
ME: “I. I don’t know. Are you?”
HIM: “I think I know what I’m talking about.”
ME: “Well, I hope you do because I sure as hell don’t.”
Then, I really quickly got on the bus because I scared myself. He had a glass eye, I think. The other one was either bloodshot or glaucoma.
In case you’re wondering, it’s very uncomfortable to be stared at via rearview mirror with a glass eye and either a bloodshot eye or glaucoma.
Still, we got to Tupelo on time, and I wasted none of my own, grabbing my suitcase and leaving.
Of course, I have only myself to blame. I wanted the experience; I wanted to support American transportation. I wanted us to be cool like Europe who manages to have safe, affordable and fun bus and train excursions from country to country.
Truth is, though, I guess we’re just not ready for that.
I’m certainly not, after all was said and done. I had to take half a Xanax this morning when I saw the school bus pick up our neighbor’s kids.
But, I calmed down when I realized that they probably both had knives of their own. So, they’d be safe.
They’d be safe.
