My Bus Ride (January 6th, 2009)

I teach children. I'm the English teacher. I take out the advanced speakers from their regular classes. I enjoy teaching, however, I hate waking up early. Three days a week, I wake up at 6:30 to be on a bus by 7:15, which gets me to school in time in order to start class at 8:00. I hate waking up early.

Usually, on my rides home I'm exhausted. Sometimes I bring my MP3 player, find a nice seat next to a window and fall asleep. Most bus rides are uneventful. The ride home yesterday made me laugh and thought I'd share it with you.

Normally, the front of the bus has a large number of older people. On this particular bus ride, the front seat was unoccupied. There were two seats next to one another, and they were both free. I took the one next to the window. Eventually an elderly man sat down next to me which caused me to wake up and adjust myself so that he could sit down. He looked like a nice man. One of those older men who keep themselves together. His hair was nicely combed, he wore a chic, puffy jacket of the "North Face" genre.

I nodded off again.

I awoke to the sounds of shouting near me. This is what I surmised of the situation. The bus stopped at a station. A large group of teenagers got onto the bus (all coming from school, wearing their backpacks). Another elderly man walked on behind them, and while the students were trying to present their bus passes, the old man had zero patience and pushed his way through the students and was shoving one boy's backpack quite rough. THis is what I witnessed when I woke.

The old man sitting next to me (let's call him "Pixie Breath") began yelling at the other old man (let's call him "Hambone"). Hambone sat down a few seats behind us and continued to yell at Pixie Breath. Eventually Pixie Breath leaned over to me and was looking for solidarity. After explaining that I didn't see what happened in English, he switched to English. He called Hambone words in the vein of "rude" and "pushy." As he was expressing himself, Hambone decided he didn't have enough. He stood up, came forward and began yelling at Pixie Breath. The bus started moving forward and Hambone nearly fell over. Pixie Breath told him to sit down in the opposite seat next to us and then he could continue fighting. Hambone sat and began yelling. At this point, the whole bus was pretty interested in what was happening.

Pixie Breath realized that the man was a moron and just turned to face me (Could I say that he was .... "saving his breath?" hahahaha). Eventually we got to talking where he really just talked to me for the rest of the time he was on the bus. He told me he was 77, that he pracitces judo and would "knock down" Hambone "right onto the ground." He told me about his wife that passed away from illness. He told me about being captured by the Nazis when he was 9 years old and forced to work in a labor camp for children. He told me how he escaped only to be caught by the Russians. He got off at city hall to take care of some red tape.

When Pixie Breath got off the bus, another old man (let's call him "Ralph") sat down next to me. Ralph had one of those medical canes with four small legs. Once Ralph sat down, Hambone made him switch seats with him. So now Hambone was going to share his side of the story.

When he sat down, he spoke Hebrew about Pixie Breath. And while I didn't really catch everything he was saying, he was sticking his middle finger in the direction of where Pixie Breath got off the bus and repeated to move his arm up and down. Hambone was also looking for a piece of solidarity cake. I tried to give him some, but he didn't speak English and I didn't really feel like trying to speak Hebrew with this guy. His face was extremely wrinkled. He wore a plaid, button-up shirt under a dark grey jacket with a brown fur collar. Before he stopped talking with me, he let me know that he was Turkish, strong and let me know it by making a fist and shaking his arm.

Normally, I sit towards the back of the bus, but now I might start sitting in the front. There's more action where the older men sit.