{"id":708,"date":"2015-10-04T10:31:20","date_gmt":"2015-10-04T17:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/?p=708"},"modified":"2015-10-04T10:31:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-04T17:31:20","slug":"the-people-on-the-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/the-people-on-the-bus\/","title":{"rendered":"The People on the Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have never owned a car. When people learn this about me, they are surprised. We live in such a car-centric society. So when I moved to Seattle after I graduated from college, one of the requirements was a decent public transportation system. The town I grew up in had none. Seattle&#8217;s was a dream compared to that.<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\"  href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/jillbertini\/10192373873\/in\/photolist-h6VVKe-v41Zm9-h6ULrY-h6VMkZ-gwEzE2-4cGpr-9v4d3z-5ZCN65-5ZyA9i-5Zxt6i-5KEZfL-5ZxoBx-5ZxoyD-pJtc4H-7Nh1wf-ngQhSG-oyE98N-613hQk-rVjjMb\" title=\"children&#x27;s school bus\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3765\/10192373873_1cf97328cb.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"331\" alt=\"children&#x27;s school bus\"><\/a><script async src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>In my twenty-two years of riding the bus in Seattle I&#8217;ve accumulated my fair share of experiences. Men <a href=\"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2014\/08\/baby-steps\/\">who want to talk to me<\/a> is fairly common. I&#8217;ve made friends from riding the bus. One friend I made ended up moving across the country to the same town my sister was living in, and they became neighbors and friends!<\/p>\n<p>I take the bus every Sunday morning to Fremont, where I meet up with friends to write. Last week I decided to change up the route I had been taking. A man I&#8217;d talked to before was waiting at the stop. He&#8217;s probably in his early sixties. He&#8217;s tall, with salt and pepper hair and a mustache. He&#8217;s a quiet man, and he seems amused by what he sees, but underneath it there seems to be a sadness. I spoke with him several years ago, when Referendum 74 was going to be on the ballot. This was to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington. He was supportive of it, but he told me his family was conservative and wouldn&#8217;t. He couldn&#8217;t talk to them about it. I don&#8217;t know for certain that he&#8217;s gay, but I think he is.<\/p>\n<p>Last week I talked to him again. During the course of our conversation I learned that he&#8217;d majored in computer science, and at some point while he was in college, he took a class to learn Braille. He works at the Talking Book and Braille Library, and he can read Braille visually. I didn&#8217;t even know that was possible. I thought that was so cool.<\/p>\n<p>This morning I saw a woman I&#8217;d talked to before. She is an artist and she sells her work at the Pike Place Market. Last time I talked to her, it was a very wet day, and she was carrying a large piece of artwork covered in plastic. She&#8217;s also probably in her late 50s. She has large brown curls and a very open face. She clutches her art close to her body, and always wrapped in plastic. When I talked to her this morning, she said she didn&#8217;t recognize me. She has face blindness, so she can&#8217;t recognize faces, but she remembered other details that I hadn&#8217;t even paid attention to!<\/p>\n<p>Did we talk at the Market?<br \/>\nNo, I said, here, at the bus stop.<br \/>\nOh, you gave me your card. It said bon vivant on it!<br \/>\nDiletantte, I say. Close!<br \/>\nYes. And you had an amazing raincoat and boots.<\/p>\n<p>We got on the bus and talked more about her art, rising cost of rent on Capitol Hill, carbon monoxide poisoning. I asked her if she knew a friend of mine who worked at the Market. She did, of course. It&#8217;s a small world. She invited me to call her to have tea or coffee sometime. I think I will.<\/p>\n<p>My world is richer for knowing the people in my community, and the bus helps facilitate that. Although I have to put up with the stranger interactions, I wouldn&#8217;t trade it in for the wonderful friends I&#8217;ve made.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"The%20People%20on%20the%20Bus\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have never owned a car. When people learn this about me, they are surprised. We live in such a car-centric society. So when I moved to Seattle after I graduated from college, one of the requirements was a decent public transportation system. The town I grew up in had none. Seattle&#8217;s was a dream [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_pop\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/button100x23.png\" style=\"border:0px; width:100; height: 23; \" alt=\"Share Button\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Reddit\",\"Print\");var hupso_icon_type = \"labels\";var hupso_background=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url=\"\";var hupso_title=\"The%20People%20on%20the%20Bus\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[53,102,156],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-seattle","tag-stories","tag-transit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}