On the Bus

Recently, due to certain ailments in our automobile, we have been forced to take the public transportation system. Often when I tell people that this is what I do, they give me their sympathy. To be honest, however, I rather like taking the bus. No longer do I have the frustration of getting across the Ottawa River, of Ottawa's often inexplicable traffic jams, or of getting stuck behind a bus. Now I'm stuck in the bus. All I have to do is walk to my stop, get on the bus, and sit. I have been getting a lot of reading done, which gives me a certain sense of accomplishment.

There is an advertisement for the OC Transpo that I have seen a lot of lately. Above a statement urging people to use the public transporation system in order to meet new people is a picture of an elderly gentleman in a suit and a young woman with an outrageously large and colourful hair-do. Both of them are smiling, but I am left contemplating whether the elderly gentleman wouldn't be reconsidering the time he spent liberating Europe. "Man," he should be saying, "I took shrapnel in my leg so that you could make your head look like a peacock's derriere?"

I cannot say that I have actually met any new people on the bus, but I certainly have seen some interesting ones. One sullen young woman slumped in with repeated thuds. I looked up from my book on the Third Crusade to see a woman with her red hair hanging listlessly over her face. She had green jogging pants, a blue shirt, and a large walking stick with a shrunken skull peering at me from its apex. I really felt that she should have had a leather jacket and maybe a tattoo instead of what I thought were butterflies on her shirt. I also witnessed two bearded gentlemen dressed similarly in bright pastel pink and green tennis suits, the bottom half of which was absurdly short. One of them had flowers in his hair. I didn't bother taking the opportunity to get to know them.