Friday, May 12th I was through work at 2:30 and I headed straight home from work as I was to meet my parents at 3:30 at my place so we could get home in time for my nieces’ out-of-town dance recital. But I was very delayed on the way home.

I was on a bus headed along Eglinton West when a teenaged boy (sitting two seats from me) kissed his girlfriend (who was sitting next to me). A turbaned woman sitting across the aisle started up a resonant harangue, "NO TONGUES! NO TONGUES! WE DON'T WANT TO SEE NO TONGUES! YOU SHOULD JUST DO THAT AT HOME, NOT IN PUBLIC!!!", complete with wagging finger. She just kept this up for several minutes. The boy at first just said things like, "We weren't doing anything. All right! All right!" and the woman just kept at him. Then of course he started to get pissed off and said "We don't have to listen to you," and she started screaming that he was being disrespectful, that she deserved respect because she was old enough to be his grandmother and her son was a doctor, and he [the teenaged boy] would never accomplish anything like that in life. Etc.

The girl said nothing and just tried to soothe her boyfriend into keeping quiet, but he was getting really angry, telling the woman to shut the fuck up and then he said to his girlfriend that he hated people who couldn't mind their own business and he thought that was how people got shot sometimes, because they messed with the wrong person.

Of course this wasn't at all a wise thing to say and just exacerbated the situation because the woman started really screaming about how she was being threatened and would call the police. I leaned over and very quietly told the boy to try to just to ignore the woman as she was the one who looked bad, not him, and he was indeed giving up the fight by then, but the woman just kept on with her tirade. At one point she was screaming at him to "SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!!!!!!!" for a full minute though he wasn’t even saying anything by that point.

I had had enough and I said to the woman, "Ma'am, if you don't stop screaming I will go and ask the driver to come back here and talk to you." She didn't even hear that, so I got up and went to the front of the bus. The driver was already stopped and had called the police, so we were waiting for the cops to arrive. Some other people left the bus, but the driver asked me to stay as I was a witness.

I sat down on an empty front seat next to a woman who turned out to be the driver's wife. The two teenagers had gotten off the bus and the driver's wife got off to go talk to them. The woman at the back was still doing plenty of yelling and by this time there were a number of other passengers who were yelling at her to shut up so the bus could move on.

The teenagers got back on and sat near the front. At some point the woman left the bus too and wandered over to the front door and yelled in, "YOU SHOULD BE MORE RESPECTFUL TO ME! MY SON'S A DOCTOR!!!!" The cops finally arrived, and I heard the woman telling the cops tearfully that "this is so unfair – he said someone should shoot me".

We were finally ready to go on when a guy at the back who had been sitting next to the woman came up to the front and, sweeping his finger from the driver's wife to me to the driver, said, "You guys are all assholes." At this, the driver's wife promptly called to the cops from the door and they took the guy off the bus too.

And so finally on we went. The driver's wife and I had quite a pleasant chat about the rigours of her husband's job and my knitting (as I'd er, been knitting steadily throughout the entire incident). The driver also admired my work.

The bus was taken out of service at Keele and Eglinton because it was so far behind schedule. There was another 32C bus right there, but it was so packed it shut its doors and left about 20 of us standing there. I ended up walking the rest of the way. When I finally approached my building at 4:10 I passed the turbaned woman standing there complaining about the rank injustice of it all to several other people.

Mum and Dad had been waiting for 40 minutes, so I had to hurry up to my place and throw a few things into a bag so we could get going. When we left the turbaned woman was still by the gate complaining to several different people. I had to fight the impulse to flip her the bird as we went by her. By that time of course we were right in the thick of the Friday afternoon 401 traffic, so it was slow going. There was a an accident, so we crawled along for the longest time, then decided to take an exit only to see the accident 100 yards from the accident — another minute and we would have passed the accident and been able to make good time. Mum drove like a maniac and she and Dad argued about the best route in their usual low-key way, and we went straight to the little town where the recital was to be held instead of stopping in my parents' place in a different town for supper as Mum had originally intended, but even so we missed the first 35 minutes of my nieces' dance recital. Which of course included my smaller niece's class's performance. Arghhh.

This wasn't as bad as the time I tried to give my seat to a pregnant woman and a man took it, and called me a racist when I objected (because obviously a alabaster white woman who tries to give her seat to a pregnant black woman MUST be a racist if she gets mad at the black man who steals it), but it's up there.

Oh, and though TTC officially stands for "Toronto Transit Commission", Torontonians all know it really stands for "Take The Car".

Man, cool stuff never happens to me.

That is just utterly amazing. Nothing as exciting as that has ever happened to me on public transit, but I keep hoping.

Here's an excerpt from one of my favorite subway stories:

Preacher Lady: (screams) "I got to testify."

Preacher lady hitches up her skirts and tells me that I am going to hell for interrupting you-know-who's word. Two or three OTHER Christian ladies on the train start shouting at me and discussing my prospects as the Devil's prison bitch. The last straw was a 50 something red faced man in a suit slamming his Bible towards my face.

There was only one thing I could do.

Me: "If you all don't lower your voices and cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes."*

* The history on this story is that it had apparently been linked to the Blue at one point and is all over the blogosphere (try Google searching for the phrase "I will have to sing show tunes"). Alack, the original post is no longer viewable by the general public.

Quite the afternoon OS. I wish I could still walk to work. I like my car, but...I just loved walking to work. Transit's a no-go for me, cos I have two little girls to drop off at two different locations.

Sounds like that mother-of-a-doctor could use a little care herself.

I was just thinking about the show tunes guy!

Perhaps I should have tried that. But the thing is, that woman's voice was SO LOUD she would have drowned out my quiet little alto.

Wow. I have to say I feel sorry for the yelling lady. I'm not a fan of PDA, myself, and can understand her initial protest. (Call me prude, but get a damn room if it's more than holding hands or a quick peck/hug.). But she must have some other stress going on in her life to vent like that at the wrong people. Perhaps she does need some prozac in her water.

she would have drowned out my quiet little alto.

Unless everyone else joined in.
CLANG CLANG CLANG WENT THE TROLLEY! RING RING RING WENT THE BELL! ZING ZING ZING WENT MY HEARTSTRINGS, FROM THE MOMENT I SAW HIM I FELL!
why do I know that lyric?!

I used public transit in Seattle for a year and nothing exciting happened. Hmph.

Here's a TTC bus story:

June, blistering hot, no air conditioning, many of the windows seemingly bolted shut. The thing is packed. A kid (20) gets on the bus at a major intersection and asks the driver if the bus goes to a certain street and the driver says yes. Kid pays, moves as far back as he can.

Bus is rooting along and the kid's stop is coming up. He pulls the wire, rings the bell, goes to the doors. Driver sails right past the stop. Kid rings the bell again and yells for the driver to stop. Driver doesn't.

Kid walks to front of bus, asks driver why she won't stop. She says it's an express bus and only stops at major intersections. Kid says he asked her if she goes to X and she said yes. She says, "I do, but I don't stop there."

Kid starts to freak out and curse and scream for the driver to stop the bus. To other passengers, kid looks like a raving loon--everyone knows it's an express bus, for fuck's sake, it's rush hour. Everyone wants to get home.

Driver won't stop. The next stop is really fucking far. Kid is kicking the doors and yelling for the driver to stop. She doesn't. Even though she's stopped at a red light and is against the curb, she won't open the door. He starts throwing himself against the doors trying to make them open. The driver threatens to call the police. Kid practically crumbles in the stairwell and starts to cry. Eventually, the stop comes, kid gets off. Someone calls him a fucking asshole through the window.

The kid was my best friend in highschool and I was with him on the bus. He was a great guy. Calm, thoughtful, everyone liked him and his outburst on the bus wasn't normal for him. However, the situation wasn't normal either. We were on our way to his house where his sister and aunt were waiting for him. His mom and dad had been killed in a car accident earlier in the day.

I was young and didn't really know what to do. On the bus, I tried to comfort him but have never been very good at that and, knowing he's a really private person, I don't feel right telling people what was going on. Watching him freak on the bus was heartbreaking, but the cruel actions of the driver and the angry passengers taught me a pretty valuable life lesson.

As I type, I'm reminded of a rather excellent book called The Myth of Sanity. In it, the author gives an example of two skydivers, one who has jumped many times and one who is on her first jump. Their chutes don't open. The experienced one remains calm, goes for her backup chute, and enjoys the rest of her jump. The inexperienced one mentally freaks, thinks she's going to die, and is truly terrified... and then remembers her backup chute. She pulls it, and is fine.

To the people who went thru it, drastically different things happened and, for one of them, the course of their life may be altered (nightmares, fear of heights, serious trauma). But, to someone on the ground, those two jumpers just experienced the same thing. In other words, if you're on the ground, you don't know shit.

So, I'm with chewatadistance--the actions of the yelling lady are perhaps inexcusable to the others on your bus, OS, but to the woman herself... well, we'll never know.

CLANG CLANG CLANG WENT THE TROLLEY! RING RING RING WENT THE BELL! ZING ZING ZING WENT MY HEARTSTRINGS, FROM THE MOMENT I SAW HIM I FELL!

It was a stupid hot night at Queen and Bathurst, and I was catching the streetcar to a date after a nine hour shift slinging pizza and cheap wine at Amato's. It was the final night of the big schmancy fireworks show down at the Lakeshore, and the slowly crawling streetcars were packed with families, tourists, and suburbanites, as well as the more usual midnight passengers: hipsters, punk Boppers, and night workers. And when I say crammed, I mean crammed, with people standing up by the driver, and lined up on the steps, and the driver doesn't care because he just wants to get us the hell out of downtown.

A middle aged woman giggles to her friends that it's just like the trolley scene from Meet Me in St. Louis. They manage, between them, to remember the words of the chorus, but can't recall the verses. Being an old-movie geek, I step in with the Judy Garland part.

And then, accompanied by a few others either old or nerdy enough to know the song, we sing the whole thing as the streetcar inches it's way up Bathurst.

Sigh. I miss Toronto.

Back in the early 80's, my cousin, sister and were standing on a packed number 7 headed home. We had to stop on this hill and the press of bodies was almost unbearable. My cousin (who was always quick with a quip) loudly lamented, "God...the only thing holding me up now are my Fruit of the Looms!"
Which caused everyone to crack up.

That kind of thing can happen at Queen and Bathurst, tomatillo.

One time I was on either the Spadina or Queen st. street car and a man and a woman had a bit of an altercation at the doors - she got impatient with him because she couldn't get around him in order to get out the door. When she did get through, he yelled after her, "Fuckin' lesbo!"

There was a slight collective hiss from the passengers around him, and one woman called him out by saying, "Because obviously if she has a problem with your behaviour she must be a lesbian."

The man then said, "No, that makes her a fuckin' lesbo," and then he made an effort to belabour the difference between a "lesbo" and a "fuckin' lesbo", to an unsympathetic audience who laughed at and heckled him.

I exclaimed to the people nearest me, "This is great! It's like street theatre!" and the half dozen or so people who heard me all started laughing. And talking to me about my knitting.

Sigh. I so want to move away from Eglinton West. I've done my time here.

Kid walks to front of bus, asks driver why she won't stop. She says it's an express bus and only stops at major intersections. Kid says he asked her if she goes to X and she said yes. She says, "I do, but I don't stop there."

What a BITCH. Jesus.

That was a pretty great story, Orange Swan. I have no amazing bus stories. Although I did once spend an interesting thirty minutes crammed between a practically passed out junkie and a WAY too friendly schizophrenic.

Dobbs, this woman in no way struck me as a person acting out because she was having a bad day. When we all first got on the bus at Eglinton Station she was chatting very amicably and cheerfully with the man next to her. She also doesn't have the excuse of provocation. And she plainly wasn't in any hurry to get anywhere.

Given the complete lack of any apparent extenuating circumstances, and the facts that she screamed at two fifteen year-olds over nothing, wasted at least 40 minutes of at least 50 persons' time, made false allegations to the police, and showed no remorse for or awareness of her terrible behaviour, I feel quite easy in my mind about setting her down as mentally unstable and/or an exceptionally self-centred asshole (though I realize this selfishness may have stemmed from her emotional condition — the mentally ill usually are incredibly self-centred).

The onus is/was on her to behave properly or to make amends for her behaviour should she err.