I Hate Buses

My feeling of abject antipathy for buses has very deep roots. They go back to my fourth grade, when I had to ride a bus to get back and forth from my new elementary school. Actually, though, at the very beginning it was a kind of cool novelty, and I felt a bit of camaraderie with the kids I rode with. But as years ground on, riding buses, too often overcrowded with three students per seat, became a grueling exercise in discomfort and humiliation that neither prepared me well for the coming school day nor relaxed me for coming home afterwards. Let me list some more gripes I have about buses.

--If you’re behind one (or just standing there when one passes by), the exhaust coming out of the back is overwhelming (and I live in the 21st century, having to breathe this black smoke!).

--Buses are mostly bone-jarring, loud-rattling contraptions that have an uncanny ability to transmit any change in the road level to the passenger, at times giving the effect of being on a wooden roller coaster (without any of the fun).

--Buses have enormous blind spots. Quite often there will be a report about someone, usually a child, which is run over or hit by a bus because the driver wasn’t in a position to see (and never can be completely). Once when I was in school, a school bus nearly hit a younger co-student who was pushed in front of the bus just as it was moving forward.

--There are no seat belts on school or city buses (at least in Gainesville). Yet the bus often comes to screeching, sudden stops that can lurch the passengers forward. Once, again in school, the bus did this and I hit my head on a metal bar in front of me, narrowly avoiding serious injury.

--I mentioned school bus overcrowding, but it is often worse on city buses, which at busy times are often full of people standing. If you’re lucky, though, I guess that’s better than the bus just passing your stop by because it is already filled to capacity.

--I have waited on many different occasions for the city bus, having gotten to the bus stop on time, and it would never show up, at least not until the next bus came 30 minutes to an hour later.

--When I went to school, the bus, along with the bus stop, was the favorite hunting place for the school bullies, who made life miserable for others. Many fights took place at bus stops.

--If you’re driving behind a bus, you often have to stop every few hundred feet when it stops.

--Sometimes, a bus will only pull off the road partially, clogging up that lane and leaving it useless.

--I’ve ridden Greyhound some, and they haven’t exactly been joy rides, either. One time I took a Greyhound down to South Florida. I was supposed to be let out at about 7 AM, but the driver, apparently anxious to get finished with his run, tore down the road and dumped me and my co-passengers out a little after 5 AM, in the middle of pitch darkness, with my ride not expecting to pick me up until 7! Another time, I was sitting in the local Gainesville Krispy Kreme donut store (open 24 hours) at 2 AM (another story) when a Greyhound bus, loaded with passengers, pulled into the parking lot. The driver got out and came in the store. Several passengers got off the bus as well, many going around the corner to use the restrooms. After getting his coffee, the bus driver then proceeded to get back on the bus and drive off! I saw people coming back around the corner, tearing off in panic after the bus, yelling at it! Eventually they all got back on the bus a while later after the driver was notified by radio that he had left a large contingent of his passengers stranded in doughnut land!

So, I don’t, as you can see, care too much for buses. But I realize that many people depend on them for their transportation and that overall they perform an important function in society. As for the drivers, it’s hard to fathom how they can maneuver around in traffic like that with such large vehicles and stick to rather precise schedules (that one speeding Greyhound driver notwithstanding). That job must require a lot of skill and poise under pressure. I was able to use the Gainesville bus system to take me to classes at the University of Florida, although one time I tested how long I took by riding my extremely cheap bicycle there. I live five miles from campus, and I beat the bus there on the bike! I think my main problem with buses is that I spent way too much time in my youth riding them back and forth from school, and also spent way too much time waiting for them in the morning at my bus stop and way too much time sitting in them at school in the afternoon waiting for them to leave.