The Bus in LA

My car is broken. It ground to a halt a few weeks ago and ever since I have been forced to find another way to get around Los Angeles. I considered my options:

1. Walk – Out of the question. Even places that are close are too far.
2. Teleport – Impossible, though not for long. I’m very up on all the technological advances. Once it’s available though, it’ll probably be out of my price range.
3. Public Transit – Demeaning yet feasible.

So the bus it is. It took me a few days to figure out the best routes to get to and from my office, but I’m fairly adept now, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson: the busses in LA are not like the busses in San Francisco or New York, or even Beirut for that matter. The cross section of people on the LA bus is rather, well, upsetting. All people on the bus in LA fall into one of the following categories:

1. Old People
2. Crippled People
3. Poor People
4. Crazy People
5. Me

Now wait, you’re saying. That’s impossible. Surely there are other kinds of people on the bus. How can EVERY rider fall into such a small list of descriptors? Unfortunately, quite easily. If Capitalism were a swamp, the people on the LA bus would be the scum at the edges, the sludge on the bottom. Let us take these groups one at a time to further understand the horror.

Old People

Elderly people who use mass transit are basically hip replacements waiting to happen. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a busload to save a grandpa from impending surgery.
Number of elderly people I have caught in my arms as the bus lurched forward or stopped suddenly: 7
Number of times I have seen an old person actually fall on the bus: 2
Number of elderly riders who have sat right next to me while smelling like mothballs and formaldehyde: 1

Crippled People

This category may seem mean-spirited or unnecessary, but I assure you, the crippled community is a well-established subset of bus riders. If you are on crutches, use a cane or are missing a limb you will surely be on my bus. Blind people, people in wheelchairs, and even a person in a total body brace (swear to god) have all been on my bus. The level of hatred one can build up against such a person is directly proportional to the amount of time it takes for a crippled person to get on the bus, reach into a pocket, fish out change or dollar bills and feed said money into the bus meter. This process can sometimes cause other riders to cry out, “COME ON!’ as they watch some middle-aged woman with a red-tipped walking stick rubs coins together to determine how many quarters she is holding.

Poor People

This category is really just a nice way of saying Latino and Black people. Really. All the white people on the bus are either old or crippled, and all the Asians are clearly visiting from out of town. The poor people often get on the bus and then fish around for change long enough to ride at least 3 stops for free. It is at this point that the driver will invariably have to kick them off, usually with much fanfare.

Crazy People

Do you have conversations with yourself? Outloud? In public? Do you like to swear at old ladies? Do you spit ferociously? Do you have a pension for throwing up and then staying put? Have you recently brushed your teeth with something like Ajax or Tide? Then you just might be crazy enough to be on my bus. It is the sure mark of a crazy person when one hears uncontrollable laughter coming from the back of the bus and one turns to find a tiny Latina woman staring at her shoes and cackling. If she glances at one, one would be wise to pick a point on the horizon and focus. Meeting the gaze of a crazy person is not a meeting that should be taken lightly.

Me

I am usually sitting next to the most extreme variety of passenger imaginable. I do my best to keep my headphones on and the music loud. This produces a curious effect: the environs are scored to whatever I happen to be listening to at the moment. Therefore, occasionally, a little old lady loses her footing and tries desperately not to die of a nasty fall to the tunes of Evanescence’s “Wake Me Up Inside.”

By this time, you might be thinking, “some of these categories seem as though they could overlap. What if you had a crippled old person or a crazy cripple?” The answer is, of course, that people certainly can and do cross categorical lines, but certain descriptors trump others. If you are old, and crippled, I deem you old, as that seems more liable to kill you. If you are poor and crazy, I deem you crazy as crazy will get you beat up much faster. If you are poor and me, I deem you to be me as poor is boring.