gozzterLeave a Comment on What happens on the 257, stays on the 257

What happens on the 257, stays on the 257

I’ve grown quite accustomed to buses, you know; ever since I retired and moved to a little island just offshore from Vancouver, I’ve found that buses are far more efficient than taking my car whenever I want to visit the city. I don’t have to worry about traffic, or parking, and I often get to meet interesting people on the seat next to me. If we don’t seem to be getting along, I just smile to make them feel guilty for being curmudgeons, then stare out of the window as if that’s all I’d wanted to do in the first place.

But most people on the #257 -the Express Bus to and from Vancouver and the ferry terminal- seem happy to share their lives with me: disclose their little secrets, and divulge their big hopes for the future, or their simmering dismay at the present. Climate change looms large on the menu for sure, but so do the idiosyncrasies of the people they’ve just met on whatever ferry they’d taken to our bus (after a quick furtive glance around them, of course), or the quaint characters they’d seen on the vacation from which they’ve just returned -this time with a less detailed examination of their fellow passengers. Everybody has a story, it seems; they’re just waiting for the appreciative audience of an interested stranger they will likely never see again.

There are, however, occasionally those who either don’t care if their own idiosyncrasies are on crass display, or actively seek to announce that they are not club members. Diverting one’s eyes from them is sufficient as a rule, but staring -silent opprobrium- although usually rude, is occasionally required. Like an actor on a stage, it is the performance that is the reward, not the applause. By ‘performance’, I don’t mean to suggest that all those who act oddly, do so intentionally, or to attract an audience; some are genuinely embarrassed by their actions, and were it possible, would blend into the crowd, rather than attract it. But on the #257, I like to think we are an accepting group. We seldom gawk, or point; if there is little violence involved or threatened, we are happy to avert our curious gaze so as not to discomfort the recipient. We are, if little else, a forgiving crowd.

Sometimes however, a performance exceeds our limits and leaks through the boundaries of polite acceptance. That is when the generally accepted rules we loyal 257ers have honed over the many trips we’ve taken, can teeter on the edge of trespass and hesitate at the latch of comment.

A few days ago, having boarded a refreshingly uncrowded bus at the ferry terminal, I chose a singleton seat adjacent to the section reserved for seniors using mobility devices or people pushing babies in strollers. The seat usually affords a clear view out of the front as well as the side windows, and since the seats in the reserved area are all retractable, when it is unoccupied there is ample room to stretch my legs into it with comfort. I anticipated a good trip.

The bus and its driver are usually obsessed with keeping to a set timetable, so we frequent users all have a good idea when we will begin our journey, and those who arrive just in time to see it leaving, know when they can expect the next arrival. I sat back in my seat awaiting the approaching departure, legs outstretched and looked around me with undisguised pleasure. As I let my eyes wander around, I happened to glance out the front window at a young woman storing her bike in the rack that all buses now offer on their leading edges. She seemed to accomplish its storage with the usual ease of youth, and I smiled at her lack of effort.

The bus was slowly filling, although most took the empty seats in the back of the articulated section, so the reserved area in front of me remained stretchingly unoccupied. Suddenly the young woman, dressed in tan-coloured cotton shorts and a rather loose unhindered green sweatshirt eyed the unoccupied space, folded the one seat that was deployed back to its position against the wall, and grabbed for one of the horizontal metal stanchions above her head. It was bolted above the side window and anchored to the vertical poles holding up the metal bar running the length of the bus… Fine, I assumed she was just curious about its strength or something.

Then, as I might have done at her age, she used the stanchion to stretch out and exercise her legs. She had quite an athletic build so, I found it easy to excuse her, and after an initial favourable assessment, I resumed my inspection of the people walking past my window outside. The bus would be leaving soon.

Suddenly I heard a gasp from a middle aged woman sitting across the aisle from me. She was staring at the young woman, now doing gymnastics on the stanchion: athletic curls and undercurls as if she were at her local gym. I had to struggle to avert my aging eyes from unaccustomed staring: youthful bodies do not go unappreciated, even by the elderly who have only memories to guide them. It was, however, perhaps too much for my neighbour across the aisle so I and several other older women moved to the by then largely occupied seats at the back.

To be clear, I suspect I did not move for the same reasons as the others. I’d like to think that, rather than being a bus-purist, I moved because, well, I wasn’t sure what maneuvers she had in mind after she’d warmed up. I mean I’ve never seen pole dancing (except maybe in the movie Flashdance), but without the music, I think it might have been considered poor taste even on a 257 pole.

I speak only for myself, a nouveau octogenarian, you understand. I do not in the least consider myself a prude -but of course, who does? Perhaps I hoped that by reseating myself I would serve as a usable excuse for others who dared not make the first move unaccompanied.

Leaders are important on the #257, you know.

, , ,

Leave a comment

search previous next tag category expand menu location phone mail time cart zoom edit close