Standing Room Only, and Not Much of That...

Dear Dr. Thacker,

Public buses are interesting things.  For 200 colones (40 cents), one can secure the right to ride the bus until he or she wants to get off or until the bus reaches the final stop on its route.  I usually walk, but today I took the bus to downtown San José and back because I wanted to get home before dark.

           

There is a bus stop just a few blocks from our house.  When I reached the stop, there were a few other people sitting on the bench, waiting and looking around nonchalantly.  I didn’t want to sit down just yet, so I stood to the side of the benches and watched down the road for the bus.  I stood there in the warm sunlight and the refreshing afternoon breeze, just enjoying being there and being alone for a change.  When the bus pulled up, I was the first one on and secured a seat at the front. 

I rode the bus all the way to the last stop: downtown.  After eating at Quiznos (I had skipped lunch earlier to finish preparing for a presentation…typical Rachael procrastination), I searched through 3 different bookstores before finally finding the book I needed for class.  Then I grabbed some Menta Chocolate ice cream at POPS, the best ice cream place ever (after Polly’s Freeze), and walked the few blocks back to the bus stop.

When I got to the stop, there was a humongously long line of people that I couldn’t quite figure out.  I finally realized that they must all be waiting to get on the bus, which hadn’t even arrived yet.  I made my way to the back of the line, but then I got confused again because it looked like the people further back were waiting for a different bus.  I couldn’t tell where one line stopped and the other started, so I went back to the line I knew for sure was for the bus to Sabanilla and nonchalantly and unashamedly cut in front of a couple ladies.  They didn’t seem to mind, though, so I didn’t feel too bad.

After a couple minutes, the bus showed up.  Then another bus pulled up behind it.  People from both lines started getting on both buses.  The one closer to me said “Sabanilla” on it, but it looked much different from any other bus I’d ever ridden on that route.  I hesitated, but the other bus, the one that looked familiar, was already full and pulling away, so I boarded the new bus and prayed it was the right one.

I sat down right behind the driver’s seat and waited as the bus filled up with passengers.  They just kept coming and coming until every seat was full, and still they kept boarding.  We finally pulled out, and I peered anxiously out the window to try to determine if we were indeed heading toward Sabanilla.  I didn’t really recognize anything, but I’d only taken that bus once before, so I wasn’t too worried yet.

At the next stop, even more people boarded, including a mom with a little girl.  The woman next to me gave up her seat for them, so I gave up mine too so they could sit together.  Now I was one of several passengers standing in the bus. 

This wasn’t so bad except for the fact that now I couldn’t see out the windows anymore.  I tried to lean down and look out, but I couldn’t see anything but sidewalks and pedestrians.  Not particularly helpful in determining my location.  So once more, I just held on and hoped for the best.

At every stop, more people crammed into the bus.  There were so many people packed into that vehicle that there was hardly room to move.  It was then that I started reflecting on the strange phenomenon that is a public bus.

All these people were crowded together in such a small space, all moving at exactly the same speed in exactly the same direction.  But all of them had different destinations, and barely any of them knew each other.  For example, the woman to my right and the man to my left were both physically very close to me, but I had no idea who they were, where they came from, or where they were headed.  Somehow that fact struck me as incredibly strange.

It’s so weird to think about all the people that we come into contact with every day whom we know absolutely nothing about.  Every person in a crowd is a person, an individual with a unique personality and a unique story.  Often we are so narrow-minded that we look at a crowded bus and simply see an inconvenient number of bodies instead of an incredible number of stories all crammed together in an exciting blend of humanity.

I guess life is kinda like a public bus.  People get on and off at different times.  Sometimes there are a lot of people crowded close to you, and sometimes you have plenty of room to yourself.  Countless people are alive and headed in the same direction as you are at the same time as you are, but you’ve never met most of them, and you probably never will.  The trick, I suppose, is to stop looking at people as just a bunch of bodies and start looking at them as human beings who are just as unique as you are, who have just as many problems and just as many hopes and dreams.

The end of the story is that I finally figured out that I was indeed on the right bus, and I reached my house with no problems, half an hour before sunset, with a new book in my hand and a new perspective in my heart.