I, too, play bus games. Whereas my guest blogger might be more obvious about hers, mine are more subtle.
My chariot to work comes around 8:15 every morning. On the cold mornings, which seem to be a daily occurrence, it’s hard to get out of bed and even harder to make it to the stop on time. I find myself regularly sprinting to the stop from my front door, purse, gym bag and lunch tote in hand. It’s quite the scene.
Five or six people usually beat me to the stop, and there usually aren’t that many open seats on the bus by the time it arrives. And I hate standing on the bus. Mostly because standing during the 45-minute commute makes my legs and feet tired, but partly because the bus driver is a maniac and I once fell into a passenger’s lap-whilst holding my purse, lunch tote and gym bag-when she turned the corner.
The trick to winning the game is stealth. People are always lined up, in the order in which they arrived at the stop, to board the bus once it comes. You have to act completely unaware of the “order” as you finagle your way through the crowd to the curb so you’re first to board and get one of the highly coveted and available seats. However, your opponents in the game are usually the same people day after day after day, which complicates the game. You don’t want them to pick up on what you’re doing, because let’s face it, I’d be really angry if I’d been waiting in the cold, someone cut me in line, and then I had to stand the entire way to work. With that said, there are ways to throw off your opponents.
-Pretend read a magazine when you get to the stop and casually inch your way closer to the front of the congregation.
-Re-read e-mails or texts on your phone while moving up in line.
-Call someone and act really, really into the conversation, all the while walking around or looking up and down, but most importantly moving toward the curb.
Acting ditzy really helps. It leads people to think that you didn’t know what you were doing instead of what you’re actually doing–practicing bad bus etiquette. Sometimes letting two, maybe three, people board before you is OK. There’s usually a couple seats open and people are less likely to catch on if you mix it up.
I guess the bus karma gods decided I’d won enough games-I’ve been playing since September-and it was time for a change-up.
I was Circulating home last week but having some trouble staying in my seat. The man next to me took up 1.5 seats, not the normal 1 seat, so I was forced to teeter on my half seat. Luckily my long legs helped brace myself during sharp turns and I managed to stay on the seat until the jerk deboarded.
Usually the person on the aisle stands up or swings their legs around to let the window passenger out. Before I could get out of his way, he had CRAWLED over me and knocked me off my seat. And he was a grown man, like 50′ish. For the record, it wasn’t that he wasn’t fat and needed 1.5 seats, he was just rude. So once again, my gym bag contents spilled out on the floor of the bus, my purse dumped over and it looked like I was doing a back bend on the floor of the bus while trying to hold myself up, super awkward.
I just sort of stayed in my back bend position for a few seconds in disbelief of what just happened. Honestly, what kind of adult crawls over another bus passenger? Is it too hard to say excuse me or can I please get out?
On Thursday I had a prime seat on a Southwest flight from Dallas to Austin. I checked in on Wednesday and was in boarding group “A” so there was no need to play my bus games with other Longhorn passengers. (By the way, the ENTIRE plane was full of loyal ‘Horns fans. Pretty awesome!) My aisle seat in row 8 would significantly cut the deplaning time and lengthen my EA reunion time. As luck would have it, some old lady wanted to sit in the middle seat and for fear she would try to crawl over me, I said “I’ll just take the middle if that’s OK with you?” She was thrilled, I was not. But my karma was about to swing back in my favor.
I ordered a $4 Miller Light for the 50 minute flight. It was a bold move because by the time the plane is airborne, drinks are served, and service items are collected for landing, you only have about 25 minutes of drinking. And apparently row 9 is the start of the other flight attendant’s territory. So I had to wait for my flight attendant to serve the 8 rows of 6 passengers in front of me, before I could order my drink, which meant I’d have to down my $4 beer in a matter of minutes. I was still stuffed from brunch and didn’t think I could stomach it. But like a champ, I did.
I guess I got double karma points for giving my seat to the old lady, because the flight attendant never asked me for $4. And we all know I didn’t offer it to her.
