Lunch Bag
There is this little, middle-aged Asian woman who I ride the bus with on mornings when I am particularly unlucky. This woman is seemingly mild-mannered, polite, and completely harmless; although, I am convinced it is a façade.
First, until the bus comes, she asks anyone near her, while she sits in the middle of a public bench removed about ten feet from the street, when the bus is coming. Eventually she asks me, always, as no one else will seemingly give her the light of day. After telling her I do not know, for I am not a bus tracker, she will ask if I can check the street and see if it is coming. At this point it is appropriate to make clear that I live on one of the busiest streets in Chicago, which is one of the biggest and busiest cities in the country. Therefore, what this woman is truly asking me to do is risk my life so she will have the luxury of knowing how long she will have to wait. And after I do this once, without seeing the bus, she will continue to ask me about it every minute until the bus does come – meaning that I come close to meeting my death at least five or six times before I even begin my commute to work.
Then, once the bus comes, she always has to be the first on the bus. And once she gets on, she stands in the very front of the bus (no matter how crowded it is), making it harder for each person thereafter to board the bus. Furthermore, there is a shelf (of sorts) at the front of the bus, near the door. It is intended for people who have a large amount of belongings, so that they can leave it there and not block other people’s way, or take up otherwise available seats with their many bags and things. This shelf is made specifically for people like me. For example, one of my law books is 2100 pages, and that is just one of the many. When I place this book on the front passenger seat of my car, it triggers the seat belt sensor because it is heavy enough to make the car believe it is a small person. My school bag, in total, is therefore at least 33% of my body weight and 50% of my body mass. Regardless, for some reason, this little woman (who is not handicapped, blind, or a senior citizen), places her one, small lunch bag in the center of this bus shelf. This is that lunch bag:
She does this every single time I see her, without fail. And there is little anyone can do about it since she is, as I said, without fail, the first person on the bus. This woman also gains so much visible gratification from using this resource exclusively, while I whine and groan and shift my weight beneath my monstrous bag, that I know she must be completely “evil.”
Therefore, on these luckless mornings, not only do I have to risk my life, repeatedly, to wait in silence for a minute at a time for my crowded ride to work. Not only do I have to push past this perfectly healthy woman with my 800# bag just to get on the bus, but I also then have to stand on the bus, with my aching back, until this woman gets off the bus, swinging her pink lunch bag back and forth. At which time, I manage to always resist the urge to steal her lunch bag, push her off the bus, and throw the lunch bag under its wheels as the bus pulls away.
Violent Femmes – Waiting For The Bus
