this was an emotional week on the 13.  well, for others and it became so for me in the listening.  it started with the angry mom who has a toddler and a giant, heavy stroller she always slings into the front baggage area (you better lean to your left if you are sitting next to it!)  i have witnessed her before: always stressed, dragging that little boy, reprimanding him to be quiet and SIT!  this time she pulled him into the sideways facing seats in the front of the bus.  another mother with a young girl sat opposite her.  at first, all seemed sweet; they chatted.  as the bus journey got under way, angry mom got on her cell phone.  soon she was yelling and then....  crying and yelling.  her little boy was looking more and more anxious and stressed as she went on with her conversation.  it became apparent that she has another child, a little girl.  she does not have custody due to the fact that her last boyfriend abused this child.  she had just "dragged her son out into the cold" for a supervised visit with her daughter and she just wants her back.  as she wailed, "what else can i do?  what can i do?!!!!  i won't ever have another boyfriend because of the last one!  isn't that GOOD enough?!!!", everyone else on the bus seemed frozen....  except for that mother across from her.  when i tore my eyes away from the back of angry mom's head, i realized that the other mom was singing.  she was singing "open shut them" over and over again.  the little boy was smiling and imitating the motions.  then she began to sing "twinkle twinkle little star", and he was smiling in his seat while his mom wailed and yelled and hurt.  my heart went out to both of those moms.  what made one forget about her little one in her pain and what made the other mindful of both little ones, knowing about pain and the need to distract those little ones from it?  my eyes stung with tears that someone tried to protect innocence.  and the next day....  morning on the 13 and a stop in arctic.  the girl who got on so thin and under dressed.  perhaps her shivering had more to do with her dire straits than with the cold?  she just wanted the money to travel to see her dad who was sick in nh.  not one of her friends would (could?) help.  in her desperation, she shouted about a promised blow job in return for help.  and i thought:  what is going on?  i felt as desperate in knowing that women often bargain themselves in their scramble to get what they need.  how could self respect ever become a commodity?  why should it?  how lucky i am to be able to form and ask and think about such a question.

so who decides what is "normal"?  who am I to decide that clipping one's horny fingernails on the bus is inappropriate?  who am i to pass judgement on someone who sneezes snot into the aisle?  who am i to feel annoyed and repulsed that someone is painting their nails and filling the bus with nail polish toxic fumes?  riding the bus has me thinking about boundaries.  who defines them?  polite society used to define what was okay and what was not.  polite society defined those boundaries.  what happened to polite society?  how do I, who believes in polite society,  exist in a bus world with others who do not know from polite society?  do they NOT KNOW?  maybe they just don't CARE.   i never had to think about these things when i drove my own car to work each and everyday.  now i have to think about these things.  is there a miss manners for bus riding?  help!

things have been status quo on the 13.  everyday people riding an everyday bus to everyday places.  i did learn this week, though, after i had pulled some ibuprofen out of my bag to take for my headache, that one can use pillfinder.com to id any pills one is given by anyone "because, well, ya just never know.  that could be cyanide you are taking."  when i mentioned that i had taken the pills straight from the bottle, i was told that we live in a socialist society (i was not sure how this had anything to do with anything) and i could be being fooled.  true, i thought, as i downed those oblong, bluish pills anyway.  there have been lots of drunk people on the bus lately; Hot Chocolate Lady being only one of them.  Blood in My Urine Guy! changed his seat to sit in front of me the other night.  Unfortunately, he did not look before he plopped down and so sat on the professional lady's laptop bag; something went CRUNCH.  she pulled it out from under him and strained to sit closer to the window.  he kept falling asleep on her and she kept nudging him off of her.  at one point she nudged him so severely that he almost fell off into the aisle, but he aroused and righted himself.  i was amazed when he woke up moments before his stop to reach around the back of the lady (she quickly sat up VERY straight) to pull the wire to signal the bus to stop.  bert told me ("i got one for ya!", he said when i got on at the end of my day) that he picked up a lady this week who boarded with a hockey bag and made her way to the back of the bus.  he noticed her talking to someone (although there was no one else on the bus at the time) as she read a book.  he had to stop for a wheel chair passenger and when he went back to the back door to let the person on, he noticed that the hockey bag lady was leaning over.  she had a papier mache head on the seat next to her.  when he asked her what it was?  she said it was her boyfriend.  a first for him.  today was the first time i experienced a bus breaking down.  we had to wait 20 minutes for a ripta mechanic to arrive to determine we needed another bus to pick us up.  more waiting.  as we picked up passengers on our way to providence they were pissed that they had had to wait for the bus.  no one seems to have any sympathy for a bus driver that has to deal with old buses.  i got to listen to a conversation about obamacare ("he is making us pay more for healthcare!") and gun control ("they can take guns away, but i can always get a gun.  you need one?")  yep.  everyday people riding an everyday bus to everyday places.