I am the frog in the water that is slowly being boiled alive. The bus is the pot of boiling water and the slowly increasing days of my life spent on the bus. The process of being boiled alive is the process of me slowly losing my sense of community/humanity on the bus.
I finally become self-aware of my boiled state when I sat on the small old Asian man yesterday. It was one of those days where everybody was using two seats. (insert Simpsons quote here: Lisa: Can I sit here? Mrs Skinner: oh course not dear, this seat is for my coin purse). It was rush hour and I didn't want to stand when there were plenty of seats available and I wanted to read All the King's Men instead of standing there and staring at my fellow freaks on the bus. So, I saw half a seat and sat down. I have no idea why the small Asian man was taking up two seats, but I assumed that he would move when he saw me start backing up. He did not. I sat on him. He scooted over and looked at me, shocked and said something which I didn't catch because I had my headphones on. I did hear him "harumph" when I didn't respond. I sat there stewing about how I was a total jerk to him and didn't say I was sorry.
And then it turns out that I have psychologically destroyed him. There were plenty of seats on the bus today so I sat across from the Asian man. But the person behind me getting on the bus sat two seats away from him. as she turned to sit down, he stirred from his reverie (he's always staring off into space and it looks like he's counting things in his head) and jumped in his seat, worried about being crushed again. Great.
(in my defense of trying to ignore my fellow busriders, a Liberian woman yelled at the busdriver for about ten minutes because he asked her to pay her fare. Something about coming to this country so that she didn't have to have busdrivers exploit her and charge her more for bus fare than required and then saying that the busdriver wasn't a native of this country because he didn't have Chinese colored skin. Oh boy. I then turned up the British Sea Power...)
I finally become self-aware of my boiled state when I sat on the small old Asian man yesterday. It was one of those days where everybody was using two seats. (insert Simpsons quote here: Lisa: Can I sit here? Mrs Skinner: oh course not dear, this seat is for my coin purse). It was rush hour and I didn't want to stand when there were plenty of seats available and I wanted to read All the King's Men instead of standing there and staring at my fellow freaks on the bus. So, I saw half a seat and sat down. I have no idea why the small Asian man was taking up two seats, but I assumed that he would move when he saw me start backing up. He did not. I sat on him. He scooted over and looked at me, shocked and said something which I didn't catch because I had my headphones on. I did hear him "harumph" when I didn't respond. I sat there stewing about how I was a total jerk to him and didn't say I was sorry.
And then it turns out that I have psychologically destroyed him. There were plenty of seats on the bus today so I sat across from the Asian man. But the person behind me getting on the bus sat two seats away from him. as she turned to sit down, he stirred from his reverie (he's always staring off into space and it looks like he's counting things in his head) and jumped in his seat, worried about being crushed again. Great.
(in my defense of trying to ignore my fellow busriders, a Liberian woman yelled at the busdriver for about ten minutes because he asked her to pay her fare. Something about coming to this country so that she didn't have to have busdrivers exploit her and charge her more for bus fare than required and then saying that the busdriver wasn't a native of this country because he didn't have Chinese colored skin. Oh boy. I then turned up the British Sea Power...)
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