Now that I'm back at work, I frequent the busses. I take the 76 to the 36 or vice versa. Now, we all know you can see some really weird things on busses. Usually crazy people conducting make believe orchestras or talking to the invisible...person next to them about angels, God, or aliens. And there are always the rude people, who feel the need to take up the priority seating with their healthy 20 something year old bodies. Now, the other day, coming home from work on the 36 bus I saw something a little out of hte ordinary. But the oddest part about it wasn't that I saw it-but that I saw 2 people doing the same/very similar thing.
Firstly, we're somewhere on Clark, before Fullerton, and an older gentleman, maybe in his 40s or 50s gets on the bus with a whole bunch of crap. Now that in itself is not that odd. But amongst his posessions, and suitcase on wheels he had a large piece of plywood. Like large. probably 2 feet by 6 1/2 or 7 feet. and it was probably 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch plywood. Now I have no idea how this man was carting all of this stuff around-but he proceeded to lay it down-on the spine, or whatever we call it, so it's basically now knee length and running in front of all the people sitting in the priority seating. Now, a little realized fact, is that the people sitting in the priority seating usually are sitting there for a reason. And most cannot hurdle the 2 foot tall wall that is now in front of them.
Well oddly enough, as we continue down the way, a few stops later, another guy, but in his early 20s walks on with a huge piece of plywood. This one just as tall, and a bit wider, but regardless of the dimensions. We now have to huge pieces of plywood on the bus! And people are just blocked in to their seats. The 20 year old guys left his standing tall and holding on to it in the middle of the aisle, so we all sat there praying he held on to everything so he and/or the plywood didn't topple onto some of us inocent bystanders.
Now I know we live in a public transit city. But this public transit city also has cabs and rental trucks and delivery from more places than we thought possible. I'm just thinking that maybe, just maybe, to avoid the inconvenience, and possible danger, they might have sought one of these options out. I mean did they know noone who could've helped them out? I'm just sayin...we might want to limit our trappings that we bring on the bus to stuff that fits in that barred in shelf/box at the front of the bus. Just a suggestion Chicago.
