Finally

He shares my last bus on my way to work nearly every morning. He never speaks, and always has a slight grin on his face. This makes me suspect he's got some slight degree of mental disability; he's got that sort of peaceful shine that "normal" people don't have.

But for months now he has somewhat frustrated me, because whenever he gets to the back door of the bus, he has the hardest time activating its switch.

For those of you unfamiliar with rear bus doors, one common design features two half-doors that open out. Each door has a long, convex, yellow rubber sleeve running from top to bottom.

I'm not sure if it contains pressurized air or an electronic trigger of some kind, but whatever the case, if you press either sleeve with about the same amount of force you'd use on a TV remote button, you hear a hiss of rushing pneumatics and the doors open (assuming the driver has activated them).

For some reason though, this fellow feels that he has to press both sleeves at the same time, which isn't the case. Sure, it works if you do, but it's completely unnecessary. To make this more complicated, he has very small hands, and he will only use one of them. For about a week when we first starting sharing the bus, I would stand impatiently behind him, watching him try to stretch his hand across to both sleeves, with neither switch activating because he's splitting the difference and not properly pressing either one.

I would give him 3-4 seconds, which is an excruciatingly long time to wait when you know the bus driver could at any moment figure, "I guess those bozos at the back door changed their minds and don't want to get off after all, so I might as well continue on my way." Before that could happen, I would reach over the short man and press the sleeve myself to open the doors. But that just felt so rude.

So I've taken it upon myself in the intervening months since I first observed this to get to the back door before he does so I get to hit the switch. And I'd conspicuously make quite a show of how simple it was - I'd raise my hand high enough so he could see over my shoulder from behind me, and extend my index finger sharply, the rest of my hand closed in a tight fist. Then I'd smoothly move my hand directly forward and lightly touch one of the yellow sleeves, then pull my hand back as the air began to rush through the system.

There's my stop. Today he is seated closer to the rear door it than I am, and he gets up well before the stop, sending a jolt of dread into me. Oh no, I think to myself. Not again.

I decide to let it go and do the reach-over again.

But he surprises me. In one fluid motion, he pokes his extended index finger at one sleeve and pulls it back as the door starts to swing open. He has learned! My subtlety (or perhaps lack of it) has paid off.

It's nice to know that I won't have to race him for that door anymore.
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The Sky

Today my thoughts and eyes are drawn to the sky passing by outside the bus.

A crowd of pigeons rests on an apartment rooftop. The apartment owners, apparently tired of pigeon poop falling on their tenants, have erected chicken wire sloping down from the roof to the next ledge down. This prevents the birds from landing anywhere directly over the front door.

And in an effort to scare the pigeons off the roof entirely, an artificial owl has been placed on the rooftop. I wonder how long it took the area's pigeons to realize it was nothing to fear. The owl is quite covered in pigeon poop by now.

A few blocks later, a seagull lands atop a lamppost in a grocery store parking lot. This startles and annoys the other seagull atop that post, and he flaps his wings and heads west, looking for another perch from which to spot food dropped by humans. My bus keeps up with him for a while but he eventually vanishes from my sight, behind a tall building.

We stop at a red light. Out my window I see a Safeway plastic grocery bag, snagged by one handle on an overhead power line. The wind is puffing the bag up, but still it remains caught on the line and merely spins in futility as the moving air spills out of its free side. I've seen shoes tossed over power lines, but never a bag - this was definitely a fluke. How did it get there, and what sort of protrusion did it snag so as to remain snagged? Will this bag be there for days, weeks, months from now?

There's my stop.

Furrow

The old man's general disposition over the course of his entire life is displayed via a prominent, permanent furrow, pressed deeply into the flesh on his forehead.

One could suppose that all he has ever done is frown, and that his only mood has been 'grumpy.'

But surely he must have smiled once. On his wedding day, perhaps, or after a good joke, or when winning $20 in the lottery?

Everybody must have a good day from time to time; at what sort of things could the world's grumpiest man smile at?

The King of the Bus

Normally I take two buses home, transferring to the second one downtown. For my second bus, I can get on a popular one that is usually packed, or else if the timing is right, I can get on an alternate bus that makes me walk a block more, but the bus is usually empty and the drive is much more scenic. This bus route is one of Winnipeg Transit's best kept secrets.

Today, my alternate bus gets to my stop first, so I jump on board. To my delight, it's completely empty (save the driver). With the fall chill morphing into a winter's nip, I sit in the middle of the very last row of seats to be closer to the engine's heat.


I stretch my arms out beside me, consuming much more space than necessary, and enjoy the rare moment of complete privacy on the city bus.

During my ride, a total of six other people get on the bus, and they all get off at stops well before mine, which is the last one on this route before the bus flips its sign and heads back the other way.

Aside from the repeated crescendo of the diesel engine, the bus is quiet. There is no chatter between the sparse passengers, no coughing, no overflowing iPod music, no ringing cell phones. Instead, the noises of the bus itself begin to fill the relative silence.

Big diesel engines vibrate a lot, and vibrations through a steel frame tend to cause everything that's threaded together to wiggle loose unless glued in place with Loctite. Including, apparently, the nuts & bolts used to hold the side panel on the seat in front of me, to my left. And when nuts loosen and fall off, the thin metal sheeting they previously held firmly in place becomes free to rattle against its frame, in perfect sync to the engine's vibrations.

It's especially loud when the bus is idling at a red light, and when it's at speed. Mercifully, when accelerating or decelerating, the vibration nearly vanishes, but this bus seems to hit a lot of red lights. RAT-AT-AT-AT-AT-ATTLE.

I stretch out with my leg and try to press against the sheet with my foot, but instead of merely accepting the pressure, the metal pops out the other direction like the lid of a Snapple bottle - with the accompanying snap/pop. I quickly draw my foot back, and catch a glimpse of the bus driver glancing up to his rear-view mirror to see what I'm doing to his bus. I try to pretend like nothing happened. Just a solo passenger, gazing out over his empty kingdom ahead.

The bus reaches the end of the route, and I rise and make my way to the front of the bus. Normally it will stop and sit for a few minutes to catch up to its schedule, and that's when I'd get off. Today, however, the driver must be behind, for he barrels right past the last stop and starts the reverse route immediately.

"I'll get off here," I tell him, gesturing at the upcoming stop.

"You've still got to pull the cord," he says.

"Sorry?" I say, somewhat confused. It's not like I interrupted another conversation with my verbal request.

"You've still got to pull the cord, so the bell rings," he repeats, oblivious to the absurdity of his comment. He stops anyway.

Here's my stop. Goodbye, my empty little kingdom.

"Do You Have the Time?"

My title today is the question the mid-30s native lady seated beside me asks.

I pull back my jacket sleeve and stretch my wrist out in front of her so she can read my analog watch herself. She nods and thanks me.

"I guess I could have just looked at it myself and told you," I offer. "But it always takes a few seconds to figure out the time. I miss my old digital watch. It was much easier, and it had a calculator and a calendar on it, which was really handy if I wanted to figure out what day of the week November 11th falls on, or something like that. Which I often need to do. But maybe that's just how I process the world."

She pauses, then lets out a slow, "O-K," inflected with an unspoken "whatever."

"I kinda need to wear this watch though, as my wife got it for me."

"Ah," she says, then elaborates. "I needed to know the time because I need to be at my nail salon before it closes. I don't know if I'll make it. I could maybe go to another place closer."

I notice a nail salon out the window as the bus pulls up to a stop to load a large group of passengers. "There's a place right there," I point out.

She seems hesitant. "Should I?" she wonders, almost getting up. "It's probably all Africans and they'll give me those long curvy nails."

"Rowr," I say, making a clawing gesture like a cat in a fight. She laughs. I add, "If you're more comfortable with your old place, I wouldn't risk somewhere new."

"But I've got to get my nails done before tonight, or I won't feel like a woman," she responds, as the bus pulls away from the stop.

"That's something I can't relate to," I say.

"Guys can still get manicures and pedicures. It doesn't mean you're gay."

"Oh, I know, it's probably good for my hands," I say, holding mine up and inspecting my cuticles. "I've just never seen the need to get one."

"You have nice hands," she says. "But I know this one guy who is real femmy. His parents are super-rich and he still lives with them. He plucks his eyebrows super-thin, and his girlfriend has $8000 implants."

"See, I really can't relate to that kind of thing," I reply. "That sort of living just seems shallow. I prefer people who are genuine and authentic."

"Mine are real," she says, opening her jacket for me to get a closer look at her... ahem... chest area. My peripheral vision confirms that she is wearing a shirt, but I keep firm custody of my eyes. "Oh, you can look," she says. "I know you're married, but it doesn't matter."

"I'm not going to look," I say, laughing to mask my slight discomfort. "You're making me blush."

She laughs too.

There's my stop. Thank goodness.

Swagger

I'm seated right behind the rear door on the bus, against the window.

My stereotypes kick in as soon as I see him swagger onto the bus; he's in his mid 20s, white, with an angry aura and an angrier goatee. Tall and thin, he's dressed all in black with his hoody up, and as he gets closer to where I am I can smell the reek of cigarettes on him. A large backpack hangs loosely off his back.

He stops right in front of the back door, and is completely oblivious to everybody around him trying to exit through it at the next stop; both his bulk and his intimidating aura present a barrier to those trying to get around him. Eventually they get by.

A few stops later, he reaches directly in front of me to pull the stop cord hanging by my window. But his angle is all wrong, and he can't get the right leverage to activate the ding so he gives up.

I reach up and pull the cord for him.

He meets my eyes, smiles, and says, "Thanks." Suddenly his dark cloud seems to have diminished a bit.

There's his stop.

Crossword

She's middle-aged, with shoulder length brown hair and tastefully selected eyeglasses. The top of her pink turtleneck is the only clothing showing that isn't the black of her leather jacket, pants, and pointy shoes. A silver purse is slung over her left shoulder.

On her lap is a oft-reused green liquor-mart nylon bag - the only part of her ensemble which isn't trendy and new. She has the Winnipeg Sun folded open on top of it and is doing the crossword puzzle with a simple blue Bic pen.

Her focus on the puzzle is clear, but it's not all encompassing. She gets distracted by various noises on the bus and frequently glances up to see how close she is to her stop.

She finishes the puzzle in pretty good time, unfolds the paper, rolls it up and stuffs it into the nylon bag.

There's her stop.

Hot Seat

I'm in a brand new bus shelter waiting for my connecting bus home. It, like the other new shelters I've seen, has an uncomfortable-looking perforated stainless steel bench.

That'll be nasty cold in winter, I think to myself. Who on earth would want to sit on those? But then I overhear a young lady, sitting on the bench on this nippy Autumn evening, exclaim to her standing friend, "They're hot!"

I look a little more closely and see that there is an electric heater running the full length underneath the bench. Being a man who enjoys warmth, I try it out - it is indeed comfortably warm, a stark contrast to the sharp twang of the October air. I find myself relaxing, leaning back against the warm glass wall, the tension of a full day and a long walk slipping away as the heat radiates up my spine.

Ah, phooey. There's my bus.

A Meditation

As my bus zips down the bus-only lane, I gaze out my window in mild amusement at the sole occupants of the vehicles backed up for blocks in rush hour traffic. I suppress a desire to wave at them, but only barely.

There is a perception among the driving public that the bus is full of poor people, dirty blue collar Joes, and screaming kids. Perhaps that isn't entirely untrue, but I do see a fair share of professionals on the bus too, in their suits with the briefcases, checking email on their Blackberries.

Either way, taking the bus is like a great big secret that I'm afraid to share too much with the drivers out there, for were they to realize how liberating it truly is, I'm sure my bus rides would be much less comfortable.

Yet perhaps I delude myself: some of them undoubtedly think I'm taking the bus because I have to, and would quickly opt out of it were I of more sufficient means. It is true that the financial benefits to riding the bus are quite appealing for our simple lifestyle, but my desire to ride the bus outweighs my need to, by a heavy margin. I get time to think, time to read, time to pray, and time to watch the world.

I signed up for this experience, and I'm loving it. For rush-hour drivers, every day is a crapshoot: they have far less predictability in their arrival times than I do as a bus patron. I'll take the predictability over the chaos and high gas prices any day.

There's my stop.

New Guy

It's obvious from the first second I board my bus home that he's a new driver. For starters, he's over 10 minutes behind schedule, which in the bus world is a dead giveaway.

But even more than that, as I board, the young, trim, pleasant driver greets me with a genuine smile and says hello. Other than the uniform, he bears no resemblance to the bitter, scruffy, middle-aged veteran drivers I see so frequently. Dead giveaway.

I take a seat near the front and notice that he also has a coach with him, seated right next to the door within conversational distance of the driver.

And there's the running late thing. He has fallen so far behind schedule that I see what would have been the next bus pass us while we're at a stop. Now every stop we approach has been stripped bare of passengers, mere seconds before our bus gets there.

After about five minutes of this, the other bus driver decides to give the new guy a break and kills a bit of time at the next stop, allowing our bus to assume its rightful place in front again. New guy honks his horn in triumph as we zip past the stopped bus.

The other thing that happens when a bus runs ten minutes late is that the stops become fuller. At every stop, there are the people who have been waiting since the bus was supposed to have been there, the people who were running late and would have missed it by a few minutes, and the go-getters who always arrive at their stops five minutes early just in case. When the other bus had lapped us, it picked up these small crowds. Now they're getting on my bus.

An older native gentleman is the last to board at one of these packed stops, and instead of showing his bus pass or dropping his fare in the coin box, he approaches the driver and shows him his ID. He is speaking too softly for me to hear him, but it's obvious what he's asking. The driver responds, "Don't worry about it." Then the man asks, "Can I get a transfer?" Without thinking, the driver hands him a transfer strip, guaranteeing him a free bus ride anywhere for the next 90 minutes.

As the man heads for a seat, the driver's coach leans forward and says something to him, again too faint for me to hear. But I know exactly what she's saying, and as she sits back and continues to talk, she gives him some constructive criticism. "It is up to you whether or not you want to let someone ride free, but most drivers will not give out a transfer. But you'll find your way and get a good sense of how to approach those situations."

It's good to know that if I ever forget my bus pass that I can probably still get a ride if I ask nicely.

There's my stop.

Sorry Folks

I drove to work today.

Life is so much more boring when you're alone in a vehicle. And you don't get to use bus lanes.
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Needy

A young lady is seated directly behind me on my bus ride home. She's talking to a friend on her phone. Shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation, I hear her say things like:

• "I'm really starting to get annoyed at him for being so needy."
• "He once turned his cell phone off for like two days, and I tried calling him and it was off so I just figured he needed some time. Everybody needs time away now and then, so I didn't think it was a big deal."
• "But later I turned my phone off, for like, a couple of days, because I was sick and did not want to talk to anybody and just wanted to sleep the whole time."
• "And literally the second I turned my phone back on it rang and it was him and he's like, 'Where were you? I tried calling you, like, 30 times in the last two days.'"
• "Like, wow. Figure it out - if somebody leaves their phone off for a couple of days, just let them be and stop worrying."

It goes on like this for like, ten minutes, like, wow, okay?

But I'm taking it as a rare insight into the female mind, from the perspective of a guy who used to be that clingy to his love interests. In my experience, there is a very thick line between being annoyingly needy and being a creepy stalker.

At least, for her sake, I hope so.

There's my stop.

Um... Move, Dummy

The crowd on my first morning bus usually thins before it gets to my stop, and today is no exception. Perhaps a dozen riders remain on the bus, including a young native man in a wheelchair, with his right foot bound in a heavy cast.

He is in the wheelchair-friendly spot up front. Seeing his next bus ahead of ours, he asks the driver to signal to that bus to wait for him at the next stop. The driver obliges and honks his horn, the unofficial sign bus drivers in Winnipeg use to make that request. Ah, we live in such an amazingly advanced technological world.

But the other driver doesn't hear the horn, or ignores it if he does, and pulls away before the young man has a chance to disembark.

"Maybe at the next stop," the driver calls out, over his shoulder.

At the next stop, the light turns red and both buses stop. There should now be ample time for him to get off this one and reach the next one.

But as the doors open, a young white man, ears stuck in iPod oblivion, boards the bus just as the wheelchair-bound native man advances to the front door. There isn't more than 2 inches to spare on either side of the wheelchair, and yet this new passenger somehow expects the chair to slide sideways to make room for him to pass.

They face off like this for several seconds. The white man is gazing stupidly, looking much like a lab rat stuck at a dead end in a maze. Suddenly I feel hungry for cheese.

Eventually he tries to back into the corner at the driver's seat and the fare deposit box, but he is really having a hard time understanding the laws of fitting into places - the chair still cannot pass; any 3 year old could see this.

Finally the bus driver states the obvious. "You're going to have to get off the bus." Reluctantly, the man obeys and backs off. The wheelchair ramp extends and the native man thankfully makes it onto his connecting bus without further incident.

Somewhat sheepishly, the white man boards the bus again after the ramp is retracted and makes a beeline for the back.

What an idiot.

There's my stop.

Darn It

Every morning, he's there on my bus to work.

He's a young man with Down's syndrome (aren't they all young?), drinking his coffee. Sometimes it's Tim Horton's, sometimes it's Starbucks, sometimes it's a generic styrofoam mug from a place with a name like "Gerry's Confectionery" or "Coffee Stop."

Today is no different; he's there, and he has his coffee. He's wearing khakis, black running shoes, a brown leather jacket, and his distinctive Firebird ball cap.

As he sits down, the coffee sloshes out of the thin lid's sip-hole and spills down the side of the styrofoam cup, and logically it runs onto the hand that's holding the cup. For myself this morning, I selected a travel mug with a lid that I can slide shut when I'm not sipping, thus guaranteeing me a spill-proof bus ride.

"Darn it," he mutters. "I made a mess of myself." He bends over the cup and slurps at the coffee accumulated on the lid, and wipes his hand on his pants. "There, that's better," he observes.

A loud sneeze erupts from near the middle of the bus. "Gesundheit," he calls out.

He repeats the name of each bus stop we approach as the driver announces them over the loudspeaker. "Wall." "Wall." "Sargent." "Sargent." "St. James." "St. James."

He mumbles something under his breath and bursts out in laughter at his own joke. A few minutes later, he lets out a playful roar, like a lion playing with its cubs.

Most people on the bus don't notice me observing them, but suddenly his eye catches mine, and neither of us is willing to break the gaze. I raise my own coffee mug towards him in salute of the morning and the taste of a finely ground bean, and he returns the salute, capping it off with a child-like wave of his free hand.

My mug is nearly empty, and as I silently tip it up to welcome the last sip, he makes a slurping sound on my behalf. Then, as I lower my mug I feel something wet on my hand. It's coffee. Somehow it dribbled out of my spill-proof mug and down my hand.

"Darn it," I mutter, with no little irony. "I made a mess of myself."

There's my stop.

Disparate Yankees

He's a young native, likely in his mid-teens. He has no eyebrows; I'm not sure how that happened. Dressed in black from head to toe, he stands near the middle of the bus when there is ample room to sit.

On his head is a black New York Yankees ball cap.

He's a white man in his 50's - a grey-haired, grizzled, scruffy blue collar worker. His blue jeans are dirty from a hard day's work. He's wearing a red hoody, a blue jacket and blue backpack.

On his head is a black New York Yankees ball cap.

Two completely different individuals in lifestyle and dress, and yet they both like the Yankees.

At least, I think that's what it means when you wear that cap.

There's my stop.

Flowers

She's about 30, a vibrant, blonde professional with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and wide sunglasses perched smartly on top of her head, unneeded due to the overcast sky.

In her hands she's holding a flower pot, which is wrapped with a patterned paper high enough to obscure all but the tallest stems peeking out of the open top. The leaves are a dusky green, and the flowers are tiny whiplets of red, no bigger than the leaves themselves. My lack of botanical training means I don't know what type of flower this is. Definitely not roses, carnations, tulips, or those obvious types. No, this likely an obscure African or Asian breed, and therefore likely cost a pretty penny.

Something about the way she's holding it makes me suspect she has mixed feelings about this bouquet. Her face seems slightly contorted; one can see that she normally smiles a lot, but there is no smile now. Perhaps it's a gift from a recent ex-boyfriend, trying to mend the relationship, and while she doesn't want to go there again, she doesn't want to toss the flowers out willy-nilly. Perhaps a dear family member has passed away, and these flowers were given to her in sympathy by her concerned coworkers. Or maybe, these were a going away gift from a job she hated, and today was her last day; the flowers were given out of mere social polity instead of genuine affection, and thus represent a connection to people and an office she has little love for herself.

There's my stop.

Zzzzzzzz

I'm tired today. Stayed up too late last night, blogging. (You're welcome.)

First, I went with my wife to her ultrasound appointment. After that, she dropped me off at work, so I skipped the first bus trip. Immediately from there, I drove up to Gimli to meet with a customer, and by the time I got to my office my work day had 3 hours remaining. Those three hours flew by, as I am extraordinarily backed up (but I still love this job!) and have much to fill my days.

Finally, I'm on my home-bound bus, but don't quite feel as relaxed as I should like. So instead of observing the people around me, I bury myself in a book.

I transfer to my last bus of the day, and tell myself, "OK, Doogie, it's time to put the book away, hunker down, and see something interesting." But I made a poor choice of seats - the back of the bus, where the rocking and swaying are like being held in mommy's arms. I try to keep an eye on the cute redhead with the 'Canadian Politics' textbook but before I know it my head is nodding and my eyes are drooping (I'm surprised that she's not sleepy too, with that choice of prose). I awaken with a start, and reset my resolve. There - buddy with the ball cap, and his longish hair is sticking out the opening in the back, which makes it look something like a knob on a dresser drawer.

But then... nod, droop... no - awake! Watch, observe!

A man whose every extremity can be described as long and skinny is reading the newspaper. His long, skinny arms fling out like gull wings every time he flips the page. His long, skinny fingers gently grasp the very edges of the paper. His long, skinny nose and long, skinny hair accentuate his long, skinny head.

Nod, droop... gah, stay awake man!

A leathered construction worker lets out a particularly nasty cough, catching my attention. But only for a fleeting moment.

Nod, droop...

Approaching my stop now. An aged man dressed in a tan jacket, tan shirt, tan shorts, tan hair, tanned skin, and flip flops (also tan), sits beside me... and golly does he reek.

That keeps me awake quite nicely for the next block.

There's my stop.

Absolutely

As I exit my bus to transfer to my next one, I see a large, upper-middle age woman struggle to lift a heavy suitcase off my same bus, but by the front door instead of the back, where I exited.

She finally manages to wiggle it down. It's a bright, bold blue, and is half her height. She's got thick, grey hair and is dressed in a plus-sized black pantsuit.

Tipping the suitcase onto its wheels, she pulls it into the bus shelter and, exhausted, plops herself down on the two person bench inside, leaving the case in front of the empty seat.

Still breathing heavily, the pulls out her cell phone and makes a call. "Hey, it's me. I guess you're out, but I'm home now. Well, not home, but I'm at the bus stop and should be there soon. I'm really tired, so I'm probably going to go right to bed when I get home. See you later." She ends the call and nearly drops the phone, but manages to prevent it from hitting the ground by jamming her arms and legs up against the suitcase.

Another woman enters the bus shelter. Awkwardly, the first woman wobbles the suitcase out of the way of the empty seat, but the newcomer doesn't sit. After a moment, she asks, "Mind if I sit down?"

"Absolutely," says the first, nudging the suitcase further out of the way.

"Thanks." With some relief, she takes the seat. "Long day!"

"Absolutely," comes the knowing reply, this time pronounced slower, and more emphatically.

There's my bus.

Crunch Crunch

She's a young black woman, dressed smartly in a white sweater and black slacks. Her large purse is slung over her shoulder; three-inch silver hoop earrings dangle from her ears, and her jet black hair is slicked back as if she gelled it in a wind tunnel.

In her hand is an open bag of Old Dutch Sour Cream & Onion potato chips.

Understand that I'm hungry after a hard day's work, with a light lunch. Those chips look good from where I'm seated. I can almost smell them.

She slowly, so as not to make a lot of noise, reaches into the foil bag and withdraws a perfect, round, rippled sliver of deep-fried potato and slips it into her mouth. I hear nothing, and then...

Crunch, crunch.

My mouth is watering... that is my favourite flavour of chip and I wish I had the social courage to approach her and ask her to share. But my seatmate has me trapped in place.

Again, the ebony hand disappears into the flecked, gleaming foil of the bag and transfer another crisp morsel into her mouth...

Crunch, crunch.

That's enough. I can't bear to watch anymore. I go back to reading my book.

Crunch, crunch.

Crunch, crunch.

Finally! There's my stop.
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SuperDad

I see him on the bus regularly, and he is an inspiration.

A tall, slender black man, he has with him three small black children (it's usually four), the eldest of whom cannot be more than six. From the level of intimacy he has with them, and the level of respect he commands from them, it's obvious that he's no nanny or babysitter - these are his kids.

And they are extremely well-behaved kids. There is not room for them all to sit together, so the eldest, a boy, sits across the aisle from dad, next to a stranger. The two daughters sit with him, the younger on his lap.

They are calm, controlled, quiet. They are sitting still.

I've seen countless examples of children who misbehave on the bus, and of children who are behaving but interacting with the passengers to display how cute they are. These kids have been infected by the bus rider's unwritten rule of social reality: be quiet and don't talk to anybody. Perhaps that's not a good thing, when even children are caused to lose their humanity on the bus.

But this dad definitely has my admiration for how he has instilled in these kids his sense of order and discipline. Well done.

There's my stop.

Wall-Eyed

He's sitting right at the front of the bus as I board, and he looks frightened. Perhaps "freaked out" is a better term; his eyes are wide and he's staring straight ahead as if he was in a state of shock.

As I pass him, I observe that he is very wall-eyed. I never know which eye to look into when I talk to wall-eyed people; it always takes me 10-15 seconds to figure it out.

He is middle-aged, somewhat chunky but not obese, and dressed sharply in a grey suit and bronze-toned tie with a tasteful gold chain tie clip. He's mostly bald, and sports a neatly trimmed goatee.

It's not until after I turn around and sit down that I see he has a big, beautiful white dog, possibly a Newfoundland breed. The dog is wearing a harness... oh, I get it. It's a seeing eye dog. So he's not staring in a state of shock - he just has nothing to see. And he's not simply wall-eyed - he's blind enough to need a dog.

I'm impressed how well this dog behaves. He is lying down behind the man's outstretched legs; a constant presence, providing comfort and assurance. He doesn't budge, but remains perfectly still in obedience and loyalty.

This is why I'm a dog person.